The Good Fight
by Stealth Dragon
Summary: Sheppard and McKay must journey home after an incident leaves them stranded on a hostile world. Sheppard has amnesia, and as if that wasn't bad enough, has been branded a wanted criminal. Sheppard and McKay friendship and whump.
1. Prologue

**The Good Fight**

By

Stealth Dragon

Rating: PG-13 for violence, mentions of torture

Characters: Sheppard, McKay.

Disclaimer: I don't own SGA.

Summary: Sheppard and McKay must journey home after an incident leaves them stranded on a hostile world. Sheppard has amnesia, and as if that wasn't bad enough, has been branded a wanted criminal. Action, adventure, weird alien creatures, lots of friendship, and best of all - Sheppard and McKay whumping ;).

A/N: Written for the _Jumper Two_ Zine (published by Agent With Style) back yonder in 2007, and a big hearty thanks to them for letting me participate. It was a blast!:D

Prologue

The wind built ripples in the sand like ridges on a great reptile, capped in the white of moonlight and dark of sharp shadows. The ripples remained fixed, but the sand was always flowing. It rose off the peaks of the ridges like ocean spray, then trickled down the dunes in cloudy, undulating drifts. Sand always moved. One minor disturbance created an avalanches that never went very far. Sand was its own hindrance. Too heavy to go a great distance unless picked up by stronger winds, and too weak to stay in one place for long.

The hunting party of eight in their heavy cloaks and animal skull masks flowed like the sand over the dunes, down the other side. They moved in a procession, not caring for the tattling light of the moon or secretive shadows that hid the smaller creatures far more lethal than the larger. Those creatures always knew better than to attack. They threatened with their stingers or fangs, only to become content and curl back beneath the sand when the intruders moved on.

Leave them alone; they leave you alone.

The hunting party was in no hurry. Tonight was a simple run that had nothing to do with finding food. In this night, in this land, sound carried far. They'd heard the clank of a gate being drawn up, then being lowered. They'd been waiting weeks to hear it, since the slave wagons had trundled into the fortress, so packed with living bodies, the caged wagons seemed to writhe.

The fortress was its own night, dotted with pale, guttering stars created by torchlight. Weak, pathetic light that did not even extend beyond the great black walls with turrets spiked like teeth. Silhouetted forms moved behind the teeth, but the party had no care for them. Scaling down the dune, slipping into its shadow, the party was too far out of range and too deep in the darkness to be noticed.

It was what the hunting party did, how they lived, in complete anonymity. Ghosts attracted more attention than they did.

Motionless bodies littered the sand beyond the walls like scattered trash, many steps from the now-closed west gate. Another gust of wind picked up tendrils of sand and whipped the ends of ragged, filthy shirts. The wind also carried the stench of death: unwashed, rotten, blood-stained death. The clean air of evening now reeked of rot, urine, and burnt meat.

The party pulled their cloaks tighter around themselves and moved among the bodies. Some bodies were nudged, others were felt for life beats. There was almost no hop of finding anyone alive. The party knew this, but that had never stopped them from trying. There were always exceptions.

The exception was attempting to crawl away now. The darkness hid nothing from the party. As one, they stilled, turned their heads, then also as one rose and moved toward the one body still retaining a soul. They surrounded this single exception, and he stopped struggling, not out of fear, but because his energy was gone.

The smallest and slowest of the party knelt beside the form. A heavily tanned and weathered hand reached out, placing its fingertips to the filthy neck - over the life beat - and feeling its weak struggle.

The old man removed his hand to drape over his knee. "He lives," he said in his high, rough voice, like the rustling of dry parchment. He looked the exception up and down, brushed the dark, lank hair from the bruised face, then ran his gnarled fingers over the long, emaciated body. Through the ragged cloth of the shirt he felt bone, and the heat of fever. He pressed his hand against the man's, side feeling the shallow pulsation of the protruding ribcage.

The man's fingers twitched and curled into the sand like claws.

The old man was speechless. This young, dark-haired man was fighting to live.

"We must bring him back," the elder finally said and rose, gritting his teeth against aching limbs that creaked. The rest of the party converged on the dark-haired man. The old man stepped back as the party rolled the man onto a blanket and lifted it to carry him over the sands, away from the stench of death and the place where death bred.

The old man cast one last, pensive glance over his shoulder at the fortress.

"You did not win," he said. He chuckled softly, caustically, and slowly followed after the party and their precious find.

----------------------

"How does he continue to live?"

"He is determined."

"The night may still defeat him."

He was flying, wrapped in warmth with a cool wind tugging his hair. He tilted his head back into the wind to feel it on his face, caressing his head, pushing through the collar of his shirt to tumble across his chest. He absorbed the feel of the wind and breathed it in to the point where his chest caught with pain.

"We must hurry."

The voices were of no consequence in the sky. The wind carried him away from everything, above worlds and people with blood staining their hands.

Then the wind stopped. Its quiet whisper in his ear became a hollow echo. He smelled water, and rock, felt cold moisture on exposed skin, making him shiver. He grew cold, confused, lost. This wasn't the sky. Where was the wind?

"Set him here."

He descended onto a solid, uneven surface that dug into his bones. There were hands on him everywhere; neck, back, legs, arms. The remaining warmth was taken away for the cold to pour in like a flood. He shivered and tried to curl, but the hands wouldn't let him. They pulled him straight, held him down, peeled the shirt from his body. Gnarled hands, dry as old wood, touched him on his chest, then pressed into his ribs that grated and gave.

Pain made him scream, desperation made him fight. Terror and fury gave him the strength to move and lash out with his arms and legs. The hands, however, were stronger, and held him down for the old hands to grope and pet. He choked on a sob.

They were doing it again.

The worn hand covered the area of charred flesh right beneath the tip of the sternum and in the hollow of the ribcage. The hand was cupped, not pushing into the burn as that it pressed gently down, avoiding bone.

"Release him," said the rough voice of someone deep in their years. The hands vanished from his limbs, and he was allowed to curl into himself. The old, dry hand remained, covering the mark. Another old, dry hand brushed through his dirt and blood-matted hair.

"You are safe," the old man croaked. "You will not be harmed here. You are no longer theirs, no matter their claim." The cupped hand flattened lightly over the mark without aggravating the marred skin. "You are free, young man. You are free now."

He had no reason to trust the old man, believe his words, and yet he did. He wanted to believe, and didn't have the energy left to do otherwise. All bad things must come to an end, and there was nothing left to lose.

He relaxed, and let the old hands carefully roll him onto his back.

"Rest, young man," said the old man. " You can rest now."

And he did.

-----------------------

The old man could walk as quickly as the young when he needed to, but stairs had always been a burden for him. Stairs carved from the slick rock of the caves were even more troublesome, the constant moisture making them slippery. He wore shoes with roughened soles to tread the stairs, and that was the only time he opted to use a cane to help haul his weathered body up.

The stairway was long, uneven, winding upward and curving toward the different caves of the upper level. He was near the top before he turned onto another, shorter set of stairs that took him into the healing cave where the young man with the dark hair rested. Clay pots the color of sand were stacked along the walls and on shelves. The fire in the pit still crackled and burned, licking the air with writhing tongues of orange. Blankets were crumpled around this fire. What was lacking was the starved and injured body of the young man.

The old man was not worried. He entered the cave and moved to the other side and the opening leading onto the wide ledge facing the open desert and eternal sky. It was evening, and the stars were bright against the blue-black heavens. The elder hobbled out onto the ledge, where the winds ran wild, tugging at the ends of his cloak. With a small grimace when his knee twinged, the old man eased himself down beside the younger sitting against the rock face with his legs drawn up and his arms wrapped loosely around them. The blanket around his shoulders would have fluttered away if it hadn't been pressed between his back and the rock. Before adjusting the blanket to cover more of the youth, the aged man looked the bandages over for flecks of blood or loosening ties. Bandages of scrap-cloth covered most of the young man's body to his collarbones, with more bandages around his arms. The old native saw nothing to worry over, so he tugged at the end of the blankets, tucking them under the young man's hands to hold in place.

The stranger's thin body was more susceptible to cold, even with the evening still warm before the frigid winds arrived. The old man said nothing of this, not yet. There was still time. He sat with the youth, watching him stare into the sky.

"You are not of our world," the elder said after a time, when he grew tired of listening to the wind. The newcomer's origins were known as far as that. The pants he had worn had been of a make none of the people had ever seen.

The young man neither acknowledged nor denied this. He kept his gaze to the sky as though attempting to see beyond the night to the small candle-pinpricks of light. The older man focused on the younger's eyes. In them, he saw turmoil that was breeding fear, as though the stranger were trying to count the stars and becoming overwhelmed, yet kept trying for reasons that were important as life or death.

"What do you long for?" the old man finally asked.

One hand lifted unsteadily for a thin finger to point to the sky.

He nodded in understanding. "You are a star wanderer. A sky wanderer. This much you know." And this much the old man had determined on coming out onto the ledge. His people wandered the upper and lower caves, and scaled the rocks without hesitation. But the ledges and precipices they normally tried to avoid. This man had come out onto the ledge without any regard for heights. In all his long years, the elder had never encountered anyone who showed no signs of fear when coming out onto the ledges.

"Do you know," he man asked, "what star you wandered from?"

Their guest's shaky hand lowered to his knee and gripped it until the knuckles turned white. His bruised throat corded when he swallowed, and he shook his head.

"What of your name?" the healer asked, although he already knew what the answer would be.

The man turned to the him, and the lost eyes shimmered with water.

"I don't know," he whispered. " I don't..." His breath caught, and the water finally rained down his pale, bruised face. He man lowered his forehead to his knees and pulled in a shuddering breath. The old man placed his hand on the younger man's back, feeling his trembling.

"Do not think yourself lost, star wanderer," the native said. "The answers you need have buried themselves within your own mind. They are there, waiting for you. No destination is reached without a journey, and a journey does not begin until you step onto the path. The path is before you, and your foot has been placed upon it. You are a star wanderer; this much you know. Next will come the second step, but only when you are ready to take it. So do not lose hope. The path will still be there. For now, rest and let your body heal so that you can take your journey."

The young man lifted his face back toward the sky and the stars.

TBC...


	2. Ch 1

_A/N: due to computer troubles, updates may be sporadic. Rest assured, though, that this story is complete and will eventually be posted in its entirety. thank you ebveryone who's reviewed. Feedback is always love :D_

Ch. 1

_"Rodney, run!"_

Easier said than done. Rodney ran through open air like it was water, or Play-Doh. If he moved any slower, he'd be going backwards. Bullets ricocheted off the sand like stones bouncing over a lake.

Rodney made the mistake of looking over his shoulder at Sheppard. He knew, Rodney knew,_ he shouldn't have looked. Every time he knew, but his brain was the director and wasn't about to have him veering from the script._

Sheppard yelled. " Run!"

Then Sheppard's back arched and his body splayed as it pitched forward into the sand. Rodney stopped as the script demanded. He turned, opened his mouth, and fell forward when a larger body slammed into his smaller. The air left his lungs on impact, so he sucked it back in and released it as he had intended all along.

He felt the scream rip from his throat, long, endless, but without sound.

Rodney jackknifed upright on his little pallet of a bed, the coarse blanket dropping from his bare chest.

"Sheppard!"

Rodney sat there, sucking in air that rubbed his throat raw. Sheppard's body arched and fell, arched and fell, over and over like a skipping record in Rodney's brain. Rodney brought up his knees, planting his elbows on the caps, and rested his face in his hands.

"Aw hell," he moaned.

Just another day in purgatory.

-----------------------------

McKay fervently gouged the table with the metal quill as though the soft wood were the cause of his current predicament. The real cause was that pliable lump of an organ floating between his ears, but banging his head on the table only added insult to injury. Or was it injury to insult? Yeah, that sounded right. Or maybe more injury to injury. Rodney pressed the quill-tip deep into the wood like a knife penetrating flesh. He pulled down, bit by bit, stabbing and pulling, forming a jagged line like a scar.

Rodney stabbed again, scratching a line through the four other lines already created. He tallied the lines, then tossed in his calculations that determined the length of this planet's days. All together, it came to three months and two days. He'd been on this blistering oven of a planet for three months and two days.

Rodney slammed the quill on the table, and with a sharp sigh rested his forehead in his hand.

"Damn it!" he hissed. He drummed his finger on the fragile pages of the book he'd lost interest in two days before, considering he'd never had interest in it to begin with. In the safety of his current solitude, Rodney quit drumming and slammed the book shut. The resounding thud made him cringe and his eyes dart around frantically.

Rodney cringed again at the rumbling thud of the library door being slammed shut. He yanked the book back open with one hand and covered his table carvings with his notes. The book, like all the books, was useless, the writers as knowledgeable in chemicals and science as preschoolers. Rodney's old high school had better lab equipment than this place, and if he'd told these people their planet was flat, they'd probably believe him.

It was laughable how many planets in this galaxy were stuck in a perpetual Renaissance faire, with smatterings of Lawrence of Arabia just to make things interesting. Throw in a flying carpet, and Rodney's current residence could have been a cheesy crossover of Camelot and the Arabian Nights. Deserts, castles, curved swords, an intergalactic portal way, way, way out of reach: the whole shebang.

Except for the magic carpet.

"Report, servant."

Rodney looked up from his pretend reading at the severely tall, narrow, sharp-faced old man who insisted on being called Master Dorose. The man's head was completely clean of any hair, like an overly tan egg. Rodney surmised it had all gone into making that waist-long white beard. Dorose snapped his fingers, and two attendees in white robes removed his robe of alien maroon silk. Underneath, Dorose wore a knee-length tunic of wine red embroidered with violet, and billowy pants of amber silk tucked into calf-high black boots. Dorose was the pet alchemist for Jyra, the resident "Szar," and didn't let anyone forget it.

Being the good boy in order to avoid punishment, Rodney rose, clutching at the hem of his gold-trimmed white robes, and bowed.

Sheppard would have dropped dead at Rodney's perfect show of obeisance, had Sheppard not already dropped dead by other means to become food for scavengers.

"I have isolated the key components, and need only to wait for them to be gathered." Rodney kept all winces internal. He sounded like a frickin' tool. Well, he was a frickin' tool. The real brains behind the operation that was supposed to be Dorose's domain. The man was a charlatan, and without his plethora of genius servants, would have been a headless charlatan. Unfortunately for Rodney, Dorose knew enough science never to get duped by his lackeys, so the charlatan was also a smart ass. A clever, streetwise, scrounging-along-by-the-skin-of-his-teeth smart-ass. Rodney despised him more than his situation.

Dorose flicked his hand in a dismissive gesture, signaling that Rodney could sit. Rodney dropped into his seat, keeping his eyes down like the good little servant he was. He really did disgust himself sometimes.

Dorose moved around the table to peer over Rodney's shoulder at the current notes. The thin man pursed his thin lips and nodded sagely. Rodney doubted he understood a lick of what was written. It was a formula for nitroglycerin, bargaining chip number two for keeping Rodney alive. Bargaining chip number one had been flares, because they were brighter than torches and a lot scarier to the poor saps Jyra's brute squad liked to rough up. Maybe nitro was pushing it, but the people of this world already had their own brand of gun powder. Liquid explosives weren't going to make a difference.

Rodney doubted they had the chemicals needed to make the stuff, anyway.

"And this fire-water, as you called it?" Dorose said. "It is more potent than our black powder?"

_Only when you handle it wrong, you pompous jackass. Oh, please handle it wrong. Pretty  
please?_ Rodney inclined his head. " Very."

Dorose gathered the sheaths of cream-colored parchment and flipped through them. Thank goodness for high school chemistry and a photographic memory. Rodney wasn't too keen on chemicals, but as a kid – like most male youth – he'd nursed a secret fascination with concoctions that went boom. Sheppard's influence hadn't so much reawakened the fascination as made remembering the volatile stuff a necessity. So jotting down the formula had been a practical no-brainer. Converting the chemicals into simple terms for the simpletons had taken nearly two weeks.

Dorose sniffed and smiled smugly. " I believe most of these components can be obtained. Excellent work, servant. Jyra will be most pleased."

_Goody, goody._

"Now that you are finished for today," Dorose continued. " You can assist Culose in studying that odd device we found in the ruins."

/iDouble goody./i Rodney almost made the mistake of scowling. He wanted to shriek to the heavens for all to hear that nothing Ancient/Ancestor-related worked in this oversized litter-box of a planet. It was why McKay was stuck here, Sheppard was dead, and Ronon and Teyla were who knew where, because some unnamed, unknown element on this world rendered most technology useless, especially Puddle Jumpers. Although laptops and GDOs managed fine. Score one for Earth products.

Rodney bowed his head. "Yes, Master Dorose."

Dorose beamed like a proud parent. "It is good to see you more cooperative, servant. I was beginning to worry that you would not be worth the trouble of procuring you."

Rodney's throat tried to close off. _Worth the trouble? Worth the trouble! Oh, I'm so sorry killing Sheppard was such a hassle. You frickin' bastard!_

"Yes..." Rodney's voice caught, so he cleared it. " Yes, Master Dorose."

The double-crossing, pissing around without finalizing a deal, biding time to let Jyra know which of these 'Lanteans was worth a raid, deceitful, lying, backstabbing...

Sheppard arching, going down in a scream of agony. Ronon and Teyla... _Where are they?_

John had said this world was too good to be true. He'd been kidding at the time, although the little voice aptly named Paranoia had been tugging at each of them. Because of the unknown element, the Wraith never came to this world, leaving its inhabitants free to be the threat. The team hadn't been naïve enough to think otherwise, but neither had they been prepared for just how much of a threat these backwater rifle-slingers could be, even without hidden bunkers and half-finished nukes.

They'd wanted Rodney, only Rodney, and had had the patience to wait for the right moment to take him, when the team was separated. Sheppard had been browsing a bazaar and arrived with very crappy timing, attempting to save the day and failing miserably.

Rodney hoped, more than once, that Teyla and Ronon had found him. Images of Sheppard's bleached skeleton half-buried in sand were getting rather nauseating.

"You are dismissed to assist Culose," Dorose said as he flipped through the parchment. Rodney bowed and shuffled humbly to the door. The moment he was in the moldy stone-block corridor, he straightened and flipped a one-finger salute to the closed entrance.

"Handle without care, you stupid son of a..." Rodney muttered curses and epithets as he made his short trek to Lab Two next door.

On the other side of the door was a nice rendition of Merlin's lab with its primitive lab kits of glass baubles and prismatic array of bubbling liquids. Rodney maneuvered around wood tables toward the back, where the shiny Ancient toys sat as useless paper weights. The short, balding, pudgy and severely near-sighted Culose was turning a personal shield over and over in his fat fingers.

Rodney leaned his hip against the table edge and sighed loud enough for Culose to hear. Culose lifted his head, brown eyes magnified by Coke-bottle specs. He squinted as he leaned in toward Rodney, adjusting the wire-rim glasses.

" Servant McKay?" he asked. His voice was small, timid, but that was only because he wasn't sure whom he was speaking to.

Rodney held up his hands. " The one and only, Culose. Relax, his High and Mighty Frop is in the other lab slobbering all over my latest..." Rodney made quote signs in the air, "...creation."

Culose eased out of his slight cringe. "Oh." He tossed the shield in Rodney's direction. "Then he'll probably be well-occupied translating your work into his handwriting. Giving you time to make up another useless purpose for that trinket."

Rodney held the shield up. Torchlight glittered within the green crystal. A pang of pain that wasn't physical expanded in Rodney's chest, and memories shot into his mind without permission. Once upon a time, he'd loved this bit of tech, then loathed it, then loved it again when it had made him the hero. Now, he loathed it for what it made him remember. Rodney tossed it carelessly onto the table.

"Used to scare off rodents. Makes an annoying high-pitched squeal. We had a hard time shutting it off."

Culose grinned, and his magnified eyes gleamed. Give the man a bowler and he could have been the Riddler, or a top hat to be the Mad Hatter. The mousy-looking man had a streak of cat in him, as attested to by his creepy smile. But Heaven help Rodney, he liked the little weirdo. The guy was like an alternate Zelenka, smart even though Rodney wouldn't admit it and able to put up with McKay's multifaceted forms of irritation.

Culose turned back to the gutted device he'd been working on. The little man wasn't stupid; he knew the toys were pretty much broken. He just liked to see what made them tick. So other than being a pseudo-Radek, he was also a Biro, dissecting machines because the insides were more fascinating than the outside.

Very creepy. Rodney had been relieved more than once that the little man wasn't an alternate Beckett.

"What will this new formula provide to Master Jyra?" Culose asked as he hunched over the mechanical entrails.

Rodney crossed his arms over his chest and shrugged. " Depends. It'll mean squat if they can't find the chemicals. And if they do, chances are they'll all get themselves blown up. I'm kind of crossing my fingers for the latter. Kind of messy but thoroughly entertaining."

Rodney was getting violent, but what disturbed him more was that he didn't care. Most of these people were like cattle to him. Let them be butchered... Culose and a few exceptions aside.

Culose chuckled dryly.

The rest of the day drifted by on the back of amiable chatter. Rodney talked, Culose gutted. When Dorose dropped by asking what certain items did, both men spouted their lies with ease. There was a time when the subterfuge had been a matter of survival. Then it became a game when life had officially sunk to the bottom of the cesspool, and survival became so secondary that nobody cared if it was achieved or not. Clinging to life became less important when all one had to look forward to was beatings over minor mishaps.

A bell rang, signaling the midday meal. Rodney and Culose kept talking until they were out the door, where they adopted their masks of humble servitude. They shuffled down the dank corridor with its guttering torches, soot stains, and moss, to the winding stair case leading up into the common grounds. There, they melded with their fellow servants in robes of white, shuffling into a line extending across the sandy courtyard, starting from the kitchens and ending at the door to the underground chambers. Servants entered the kitchen empty-handed and exited carrying a bowl of thin stew, a crust of bread on the bowl's wide rim, and a tin cup of water. They ate out in the courtyard on the dusty ground.

Rodney and Culose arrived in time to be in the middle of the line, and were able to grab a spot by the fountain. They sat with the old woman who washed the clothes and her husband who tended the animals. Neither was very talkative, they simply enjoyed having the company. On occasion, the old man would break in with a story about what some silly animal did. Culose found it genuinely amusing. McKay simply phased out until the story was over.

There was an upside to the robes when it came to being outside. By midday the sun beat down on the courtyard, but the robes were white enough and light enough to deflect most of the heat. McKay was hot, but he wasn't sweating every molecule of water from his body.

A half hour later, the bell sounded again. Finished or not, another line formed to deposit the dishes, most servants scraping and licking in a last-ditch effort to get every bite. Rodney didn't wallow in the shame of being one of them. When the dishes were discarded in the massive wooden wash basin in the kitchens, Rodney and Culose hurried across the courtyard to the door leading to the underground chambers.

The rest of the day was wasted with more idle chatter. Rodney told Culose of the technological wonders of Atlantis, while always making sure to squeeze in a little remorse those wonders no longer existed now that the city was destroyed. Culose talked of the inventions he'd never had a chance to finish since he'd been taken from his caravan by Jyra. One invention sounded remarkably like the light bulb. It was no wonder this Wraith-free culture couldn't advance.

Evening came with the sound of the bells, and Rodney and Culose headed back out into the blessedly cool dusk for the evening meal. More stew and bread. They sat with the washerwoman and animal caretaker again, this time along the far wall, the courtyard fountain already taken. When the meal was complete, the drudges scurried off to finish their duties before the bell tolled for bedtime. Rodney and Culose moved to the opposite wall with the other genius vassals to wait for Dorose. He arrived dressed in his finest azure cloak about an hour later, a little tipsy from too much drink. He looked at each man lined up against the wall before landing his gaze on Rodney and pointing at him.

"You... Yes, you. You are the one with the fire-water, correct?"

Rodney bowed his head. "Yes, Master dorose."

Dorose belched and nodded. "Good, Tomorrow, you are to start making it. I have told Lord Jyra of it, and he was most pleased. So... make it... yes. You are to make it, non-stop, tomorrow. Meals will be brought to you." He belched again, then huccuped.

Rodney bit his bottom lip and bowed. " Yes, Master Dorose."

Dorose had stopped looking at him. The man's gaze was distant, his eyes gleaming, his lips twitching toward a smile. He was probably daydreaming of advancement in pay again. Rodney waited until the man left with his personal servants biting his heels, before heading to the servants' quarters located on the north western side of the complex. Being in the science division, he had the luck of sharing a single room with the rest of the department on the second floor of the small building. He climbed the stairs along the outside wall to the small door, and entered the already darkened room. Roney picked his way through the occupied pallets to his in the far corner.

There were only two small windows in the room, and Rodney glanced out the first one when he passed it. He heard the clank of a gate; the dungeons were being emptied again. Rodney stopped and leaned on the stone sill to stare out at the horizon.

To the right, flecking the darkness like immobile fireflies, were torches. Jyra's position was safe as long as no one came along to challenge it, but there was always a group or two willing to test his power. Those torches had been dotting the darkness for days now. There would come an attack, and chances were good it wouldn't even reach the outer walls. Jyra never let things go that far.

Rodney turned his attention back to the horizon. If the dungeons were being emptied, then the grave robbers were probably on their way. Rodney thought he could see them if he squinted, always darker than the darkness, like living shadows. Maybe he was imagining it, but he thought he saw one standing right on the horizon, cloak layers flapping like wings, staring back as Rodney stared at him. Maybe it was paranoia but Rodney could feel eyes on him from somewhere beyond this place of stone, mold, idiots, and creeps.

Maybe Rodney wanted to think someone was watching him, seeing him, even recognizing him.

Fat chance there, buddy.

No one had come for him. No one was coming for him. Rodney hadn't given up hope, he just wasn't keeping a firm grip on it. It hurt too much to hold on that tight for so long.

-------------------------------

_Sheppard arched, splayed, fell._

_Rodney screamed, making no sound._

He shot upright on his pallet, shivering from the cold air of early morning soaking into his sweat-drenched skin. The rest of the little science team was stirring, but Rodney was the only one undeniably awake. He brought his knees up to rest his forehead on, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth.

At least the dream ended with good timing. Normally, he'd awaken gasping when it was still dark. It was dark, just not ink-dark. More like bottom of the ocean dark, a dark Rodney was uncomfortably familiar with. He tossed aside the blanket and rose with a grunt. Stretching until his stiff muscles loosened, he then grabbed his robe next to his pallet and yanked it on. He already knew what he needed to do and where he needed to be, so he didn't wait around for his cohorts to get through the morning routine. He headed outside, across the common grounds to the kitchen, tenth in line to get his breakfast of thin cream of wheat the color of wood and a yellow liquid that was supposed to be milk but tasted like sour cheese. He didn't bother using the spoon. He choked down the porridge and the milk, circled around to dump his dishes, and headed to the labs.

Rodney's hand was extending to the handle of the door leading to the underground chambers when the bell clanged, making him flinch. He cringed against the wall when men armed with swords and arrows charged past like a human Running of the Bulls. They clamored up the steps shouting orders, while a larger contingent made for the doors leading to the outer court.

Foresk – Jyra's general, dressed in clothes of dark violet and red, a cloak of violet, and tarnished armor - strode quickly to the doors with twenty more armored men following. Rodney gulped and pressed tighter into the wall. Trembling was inevitable, and Foresk noticed when he glanced at Rodney. The general smiled, flashing dirty teeth. The muscles of Rodney's back tightened, pulling the slowly healing scabs that always caught on his clothes and itched.

Foresk handled servant discipline personally, with whips, knives, and steel-toed boots. Rumor had it he became even more creative when it came to forcing information from prisoners – chains in place of whips.

Rodney straightened when Foresk passed, and breathed out in relief. He saw Culose hurrying across the courtyard to him in his hunch-shouldered, cowering way. The two slipped into the safety of the winding stairwell spiraling into the moist subterranean corridors.

"Who is it this time?" Rodney asked. " Do you know?"

Culose adjusted his thick-lensed glasses and sniffed. " I've heard talk that it is Meraffa's band from the north."

"Never heard of him."

They entered the dusky halls, moving four doors in before coming to the fifth where the chemicals were stored. The large chamber was a chemist's toy store, with bookcases and shelves carrying a rainbow collection of liquids, rocks, and powders in glass containers or sacks.

"Of course you haven't," Culose said. " This is the first Meraffa has ever made a move against Jyra. I can't tell you much about the man myself except for what I heard on the rumor line." Culose took a woven basket from the stack by the door and held it as Rodney gathered the needed items. "Meraffa is said to be as powerful as Jyra, and ruthless in battle."

Rodney took bottles and bags, opening some to sniff, setting some back, and putting others in the basket. "So, there's actually a chance Foresk might end up with his head on a stick. Not that I've been down on my knees praying to be someone else's slave, but it would be worth it if it meant Foresk being drawn and quartered."

Culose chuckled softly. "I second that."

At the immediate moment, Rodney's only hope was that the items sitting in the basket were the ones he needed. Chances were good Jyra would be wanting to use the nitroglycerin in the near future. Rodney doubted he'd be able to concoct real nitro, but he could whip something up that would make one hell of a fire show if used right.

Rodney led the way to the neighboring lab with the glassware equipment. With Culose's help, he measured and mixed, going for something that, if not explosive, was at least highly volatile around fire. Food was brought to them by a fellow lackey, and Durose dropped by sporadically to check on the progress. By the end of the day, Rodney didn't have nitroglycerin, but something akin to a Molotov cocktail but with a way bigger kick.

Durose came to collect, and Rodney and Culose were hustled out of the lab to the servants' quarters. The little science department was gathered on the floor, all ready for bed but sitting up rigid as trees as they muttered about the conflict outside. Rodney went to the window to watch the show. He saw pinpricks of flickering yellow light flit through the air. Some fizzled out into the darkness between the two armies; a few flashed in an explosion that had Rodney seeing stars: his cocktail of destruction. Rodney felt a small spring of pride for his little creation buying him another month of escape from Foresk's sadism.

He missed the tsunami of accomplishment that used to have him grinning in a way that pissed off everyone else. He missed massive leaps-and-bounds discoveries of an advanced technological nature that got his heart pounding and adrenaline surging. Sheppard had had his bad-ass weapons, Rodney his bad-ass discoveries. Innocent drugs of choice with plenty of rush and no regrets... well, no regret as long as the discovery didn't accidentally kill anyone. Rodney missed a lot of things but tended to be more specific on certain days, depending on what the day brought.

He was a little surprised to be missing Ronon. The Satedan would have loved this, probably arming himself to rush out to join in the carnage. Sheppard would be saying something asinine about the effectiveness of C-4 over Molotov cocktails, and how if he'd just had his gun... Then Rodney would tell him to shut up about his gun, that it was a lost cause, and he should be happy there were still ways of making things go boom in a flash of blinding light.

If Ronon and Sheppard would have been there, all three of them would have ditched this place a month before.

_Where is Ronon, anyway? And Teyla?_ Rodney wondered that in general. On this massive planet that could reach temperatures beyond one hundred degrees, where advanced technology refused to work and lesser tech was useless, Rodney had come to accept that the gang wasn't going to find him any time soon. Maybe in the far-flung future, months or years from now. Tomorrow and weeks to come were out of the question.

_Are they looking for me, or have they stopped caring?_ Rodney couldn't deny that Teyla probably cared. Ronon would keep looking just out of spite. Atlantis – Elizabeth - Rodney wasn't so sure about. She would want to keep looking, while the SGC nagged at her to quit. Two months was a long time and the higher ups didn't like resources wasted on what they saw as a lost cause.

Ronon and Teyla would definitely keep looking. Maybe not on a continual basis, but enough to jump on whatever they might hear or see that would lead them to their lost team mate.

Rodney grinned. There was a time when he would have been shocked by his own lack of cynicism. The thing was, he'd had a lot of time to think, and he did come to the undeniable conclusion that there were people out there who really did care about him one way or another. If they weren't searching for his sake, they were searching for Sheppard's, because it was what he would have wanted them to do.

Rodney had to hand it to the colonel. Even when dead, the man was still reliable.

Except, Rodney was still here, still not found. So he'd also come to the conclusion he wasn't optimistic; he was delirious. Not that he minded, as it gave him something to look forward to, to push for, to exist for, pretending that lights at the end of dark tunnels really did exist.

Reality officially sucked enough to owe him a fantasy or two to cling to. He'd earned that right.

-------------------------

Reality didn't play fair. The bell woke Rodney before the nightmare could. He sat up glancing wildly around like a spooked gopher. The others in the puny science department were doing the same, tossing in a few incoherent mumbles of panic. The bells never rang this early unless there was an emergency.

Five rings, then the bell stopped, then rang again five more times.

The call to arms.

Rodney flipped aside the rough woven blanket and rolled from his pallet, scrambling to the window. He gripped the sill and used it to pull himself up. The world was practically solid black except for the globs of lights, no longer little yellow pinpricks in the distance.

" Damn it!" Rodney growled. This had only happened once during Rodney's stay at Hotel De Purgatory. The skirmish beyond the gates had become an all-out siege. That meant no one going out, no one coming in, and potential food shortages as the opposing army waited Jyra and his men out.  
Rodney's hypoglycemia was going to have a field day.

Dorose himself barged into the servant's quarters, out of breath, pale, and still dressed in his night robe.

"We need more exploding liquid!"

Rodney jolted, scrabbling toward the door while simultaneously grabbing his robe. Dorose led the way at a run to the labs, dumping McKay there while the others who trickled in gathered the needed chemicals listed on the formula sheets. They dumped all the necessary ingredients on McKay's table and formed an assembly line, passing bottles down the row for each person to add what was needed.

They worked non-stop through the day, faster and faster as the need for the cocktails rose to a frenzy. Rodney's hands began to shake when his hypoglycemia reared its ugly head. But he didn't stop, not even to beg for food. He had his own hide to consider, Jyra and his plight be damned.

The bell rang four times, the call for servants to be armed. Durose snapped at the scientists to ignore it and keep working. Rodney's hands shook harder, spilling half the ingredients.

The bell tolled, twice. Everyone froze, straining their ears to the sound.

The bell tolled twice more.

_For whom the bell tolls? Us, because we are so screwed!_

Twice had never been heard. That didn't mean the occupants of this castle were naïve about it. The outer walls had been breached, and the inner walls were going to follow soon.

Rodney looked over at Culose, who had been around long enough to know all the planet's nuances. Rather than seeing fear on the mousy man's face, Rodney saw rapture, and a rather psychotic gleam in the magnified eyes.

"You know what this means?" Culose breathed, and turned his manic gaze on Rodney.

Rodney recoiled. "Uh... N-no. W-w-what?"

Culose adjusted his glasses and grinned. " Chaos breeds distraction. Time to go." He then took off at a run from the lab.

Rodney had gotten Culose's meaning immediately. Escape. And yet he found himself unable to move.

Not all the genius lackeys. Others had caught Culose's succinct speech, understood it, smirked, and fled. The rest eventually ambled after, more confused than giddy, following like sheep in desperate need of a shepherd, leaving Rodney completely alone.

Rodney's shoulders slumped, and he emitted a tiny whimper. He only had two choices in the matter; cower in a corner or make a break for it.

Thankfully, his survival instincts made the decision for him. But he didn't take off like Culose and the rest. Instead, he crept to the door peering timidly out. Certain that it was empty, he slipped from the lab and made his way down the hall to the stairs, then out into the empty courtyard echoing with the dissonance of battle. Rodney's heart pounded harder and faster.

Where was everyone?

A thunderous thud had Rodney nearly jumping out of his skin. He yelped, and whirled around in time to hear the second thud and see the massive doors of the inner court shudder. Rodney's heart shot into his throat, and all coherent thought left him. He ran, heading toward the servants' quarters, not knowing why. He was acting on a simple instinct: doors about to break, doors bad, get away from doors. Or, more appropriately, get away from the open.

Just get away.

Rodney tore across the common ground toward the quarters at a speed that had the air burning his lungs and each footfall jarring his legs up to his hips. He whipped around the building, almost slipping on the gritty ground.

A hand shot out of the darkness, grabbing Rodney by the collar and yanking him back.

Another hand slapped over his mouth before he could even let loose a startled yelp. Both hands pulled Rodney back, pressing him against something solid and warm.

His collar was released, and an arm wrapped around his chest while the other hand continued to cover his mouth. The faceless figure began dragging him backward, away from the servants' quarters and toward the stables.

The stables nearly suffocated Rodney with its stench of manure and animal musk. The edaakas – dinosaur-like beasts with equine forms – snorted, pawed, and trilled in agitation.

Rodney's captor swung him around to face an already saddled and bridled edaaka, the big black one Rodney had dubbed the James Dean of edaakas a while back. The creature had an attitude that made teenagers seem manageable. The edaaka snorted and shook its spiked and webbed mane.

"Get on," Rodney's captor whispered. "If you want to live."

Good enough incentive. Rodney was released enough to allow him to slip his sandeled foot into the stirrup and hoist himself into the saddle with a little shove. His captor climbed on behind, grabbing up the leather reins. The stranger gave a small kick to the edaaka's leathery flanks and steered the creature out of the stables and into the open court, pointing it right at the shuddering, splintering doors.

"Hang on," the man breathed.

Rodney's heart beat hard enough to explode. Even through the layers of cloth and skin, he could feel the other man's heart pounding just as fast against Rodney's shoulder blade.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! What the hell do you think you're doing?" Rodney squeaked. " An Attila the Hun-type army's going to bust through there at any moment, and you're going to ride right into them!"

The stranger didn't reply except to tighten his thin fingers on the reins. The edaaka made a gutteral trumpeting sound and pawed the earth with its fore claw. Rodney flinched when the thing's agile tail lashed in the corner of his eye.

"Oh, this is bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad..."

Another thud, and the doors splintered, flying open the same instant the stranger slammed his heels into the edaaka.

"_Baaaaad_!" Rodney shrieked. As the army poured in like a flood of bodies and sharp steel, the edaaka charged out, carrying Rodney and the stranger with it.

The number one rule when it came to an edaaka was to never be in one's way when it was charging. For all their horse-like appearance, the creatures were predators with sharp claws and vicious fangs. You got out of an edaaka's way, not the other way around, and that's exactly what the men did, practically diving to the ground in order to avoid the teeth.

The stranger kept the edaaka on a straight course, cutting a nice swathe through both armies like Moses parting the Red Sea. Out of the inner courtyard, then the outer, through the splintered gates and into the endless desert. Men continued to clear a path, although a few took a shot at the escapees. Rodney flinched and ducked with each shot, felt the heat of bullets score past his face, and heard his captor grunt with pain. The edaaka's hide was too thick to penetrate, so the bullets were nothing more than mosquitoes to it.

The charging animal broke through the two armies, racing toward the horizon. Its heavy, thick-toed feet pounded the sand as though it were solid turf, kicking up spray in its wake like a dolphin cutting through water. The roaring wind, the speed, and the lack of walls filled Rodney with a surge of adrenaline that had him shaking. Whatever his new plight and whoever his captor, at that moment it didn't matter. He was out, away, and moving farther and farther from purgatory.

He was free, even should that freedom end the moment the ride did. Rodney continued to feel his captor's heart tapping his shoulder, and the man's panting breath puff warm on the back of his neck. The edaaka's flanks heaved like a rapid bellows every time its feet hit the ground. The beast carried them over the sand, cresting rises like waves, then racing down into small valleys. They were running to the horizon, and Rodney had the impression that once that horizon was reached, they would take off into the sky.

Delirium of a new kind, and Rodney was loving it.

Then came good old reality like a brick wall when, on the next crest, Rodney saw, like ink-stains against the blue-black, eight figures lining the top of the next dune. His heart faltered in his chest, and euphoria beat a hasty retreat.

"Oh, no."

His captor steered the edaaka straight at the people. When they were only feet away with the figures showing no signs of moving, did the stranger yank hard on the reins, tugging the edaaka to an abrupt halt that had it rearing, snorting, and bellowing.

Rodney's heart stuttered again. These figures weren't men. They were creatures, beasts in ragged layers of dark skin flapping in the wind like capes, and skinless heads with empty eye-sockets, long snouts, and serrated fangs. They surrounded the edaaka and its riders, saying nothing and doing nothing except forming a wide circle.

Rodney felt his captor dismount. He looked down, and the breath caught in his throat. The figure standing beside him was one of them, a beast with a skull head and ragged skin.

No, not skin; it had been cloth. Rodney remembered feeling cloth, and a heartbeat.

Terror constricted his chest, pushing into his mind to take it for a spin that had the world whirling around him. His body reacted without his brain, both trying to scramble away and grabbing the reins. He slid from the saddle falling hard to the ground. The world spun faster, too fast. The figures surrounded him, his captor kneeling beside him. Claw-like hands lifted to the skull-head and pulled upward. The head detached. Rodney would have screamed if his throat hadn't closed off.

The head was tossed aside, revealing another head, a human head.

A very, very familiar human head, topped by dark hair that spited gravity. Moonlight outlined a long face with vividly angular bone structure. The face moved in close, close enough for Rodney's dark-adjusted eyes to see more, including wide hazel eyes.

Rodney was pretty certain his heart had stopped working. He was dead, he knew it, he had to be.

"Sheppard?" he croaked.

John blinked, flinching minutely. Then darkness spilled in over Rodney's vision, making Sheppard's face the last thing he saw before his own personal night closed in.

TBC...


	3. Ch 2

A/N: Thank you everyone for the reviews. Feedback is always appreciated :D

Ch. 2

_I'm dead. Very dead. Finally._

Rodney heard sounds, muffled at first, kind of echoing. He would have ignored them, being comfortably ensconced in warmth and floaty darkness, but curiosity got the better of him.

_Find out about the noise. Once discovered, mission accomplished, go back to sleep. Simple as that._

Rodney focused on the sounds, wading through the darkness as though it were mud. The sound eventually sharpened into snap, crackles and pops.

_Rice Krispsies._

Not as quick, but just as sporadic. After sound followed feeling; the feeling of heat on his cheek, and the comfortable warmth still cocooning his body. The only discomfort was the solid, uneven surface that was making his return to consciousness less pleasant. He hadn't felt the discomfort in his happy little void and was tempted to return there.

"He awakes."

A human voice. Now, that warranted a more proper looking into. Rodney forced his heavy eyelids to part, only to be met by a world of fuzz. He blinked the film away, and the world focused. A face loomed over Rodney, a face he knew.

The face of a dead man.

Rodney's eyes popped wide and he yelped, jerking back. John copied him, recoiling like a spooked dog. Rodney struggled from his prison of blankets until his arms were free enough to push himself away from the specter.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! What the freakin' hell!"

Dry, clacking chuckles forced Rodney's awareness to take in the old man with the snow white hair wilder than Zelenka's and tea-brown skin sitting with his knees drawn up before the fire. He had one withered, spindly armed draped over a cloth-clad knee, and the other holding a long-stemmed pipe. The ghost of Sheppard was crouched beside him, tense as a cat about to make a run for it.

Rodney pointed a stiff and trembling finger at the specter. " Y-y-y-y-you... Y-y-you... Dead. You... You're... Dead. Dead. Supposed to be. Dead, very, very dead. They shot you, they shot..."

The old man placed the pipe between his thin lips. He inhaled smoke out of one corner of his mouth, exhaled through the other, and nudged Sheppard lightly in the side. "Are you dead, Sky-wanderer?"

Sheppard looked at the old man, then back at Rodney.

The old man chuckled again."He felt solid to me," he said. " I can assure you, young man, that this one," he placed a gnarled hand on John's shoulder, " is very much alive. I should know. I healed him. Felt his heart beat beneath my hands. But you are right. By all means, he should be dead. But he is not. He did not want to die."

Rodney's eyes darted back and forth between the skinny old man and Sheppard. He felt like puking.

_Dream, gotta be a dream._ Except, dreams were never this tangible. His hip was already going numb from lying on it too long. Rodney untangled himself from the blankets in order to push up onto his rear. He never took his eyes from John, who remained crouched by the fire as though ready to run. It took a moment, a very long, mind-numbing moment, for what Rodney was seeing to sink in.

Ghosts normally wore the clothes they died in... or so the Hollywood-perpetuated legends dictated. They were also pale, sometimes a little ragged in the skin. Sheppard looked very solid, very whole, and very gaunt. The BDU pants, though a bit worn, were the same. Boots, too. The shirt was new: brown as dirt, long-sleeved, and two sizes too big. The collar hung low, well past Sheppard's protruding collarbones, and was frayed around the hem, cuffs, and collar. There were holes, small ones, with one or two larger. The cloth itself was so threadbare, there seemed no point in wearing the thing. It clung to Sheppard's curved back tight as skin, giving Rodney a very clear view of John's ribcage and spine. John's hair was a little longer, but still the same spiked mess that would never go out of style for the man. His thin face was darkened with stubble that wasn't quite a beard but was definitely getting there.

Put it all together, and John looked like a refugee, a half-starved, wild-eyed refugee.

Rodney furrowed his brow. "What the hell happened to you?"

John moved one leg, folding it beneath him, but kept the other up, gripping the knee with both his hands. His gaze ping-ponged between Rodney and the old man, and after a little while his bony hands began rubbing up and down his bony calf.

Sheppard was clearly agitated, and getting more agitated by the moment. Rodney was a little startled to see a gradual increase of trepidation in Sheppard's eyes. It wasn't something Rodney had seen often enough to ever get used to. Sheppard was usually all about defiance, stoicism, and keeping a cool head no matter what. Right now, he looked ready to break down over a simple question.

It was starting to make Rodney nervous.

Rodney ducked his head to catch Sheppard's eyes. "Uh, Colonel? It's not that hard of a question to answer here."

Sheppard's head snapped back in Rodney's direction. "K-Kern-ul?"

"Yeah, Colonel. As in, Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard. That is your rank, right? Because I just got used to it and I am not memorizing a new one... "

"Rank?"

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Yes, Colonel, rank. Military rank. What's wrong with you?" He looked at the old man. " What's wrong with him?"

The old man said nothing, so Rodney looked back at John for the answers. Sheppard had pried one hand from his leg to start rubbing the back of his head while rocking back and forth.

Rodney felt the blood begin to pool at his feet. " Sheppard?"

Rocking, now trembling. Sheppard really was about to fall apart. "Is..." he began, almost timidly. " Is that... that my name?"

Rodney's jaw would have clattered to the floor if it hadn't been attached to his face.

"Oh, my gosh." Rodney looked away. "Oh, my gosh." He should have suspected something wasn't quite right with a dead man crouched before him, should have known it was all too good to be true. Something always had to give in situations like these.

_Amnesia. No way..._

Rodney turned back to Sheppard, who was still rocking, shaking, and waiting with held breath for an answer.

Rodney twitched out of his stupor but not his shock. "Uh... yeah. Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard." He then pointed at himself. " I'm Rodney McKay. Uh... Dr. Rodney McKay."

"You know me?"

"Well, obviously, since I know your name."

A small smile fought its way onto Sheppard's thin face. One sickly but wholly innocent smile, like a child who'd just read aloud his first book. John looked to the old man, who puffed on his pipe and smiled back. He looked back to Rodney, and moved his hand again to grip his leg.

"It's a long name," John said, still all placid smiles.

Rodney shrugged. " Well, most people call you John. I usually call you Colonel or Sheppard. But, yes, John's the usual name."

"John," John repeated. "John." He then perked up, still like a kid. So much so that despite his current appearance, he actually looked several years younger. "You hungry?" he asked, then nodded enthusiastically. "You're hungry. We have food." He pushed off from the floor and hurried away, probably to go grab some of said food.

The old man chuckled again. Rodney would have been creeped out by it if he hadn't already been creeped out by everything else. He gave the old man an accusing glare, then jerked his thumb in the direction John had gone, which wasn't very far. Just to the other side of the cathedral-massive cavern. There were fires everywhere, people everywhere, with more coming and going through gold-lit entrances where stairs carved from the stone climbed upward. Windows in the cave wall behind both the old man and Rodney revealed smaller caves like the rooms of apartments, where more bodies passed, temporarily eclipsing the light. John had gone to the rather large gaggle of old and young women gathered around several pit-fires and tables, stirring pots, chopping vegetables, and kneading dough.

"What the hell happened to him?" Rodney asked the old man.

The native blew a stream of smoke from his nose. "Terrible things."

"Uh-huh. Care to elaborate?"

"I cannot. That is all I know." The old man was not unlike that creepy old village man from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

"How do you know?"

"I healed him."

Made sense, but Rodney wasn't satisfied. "Look, the last time I saw him was when he was taking a nosedive into the sand because someone put a bullet in his back."

The elder took his pipe from his mouth to point the stem at Rodney. "There was a wound, a scar, not properly healed." The man reached back behind himself. "Over the flat bone of the back."

Rodney nodded, listening with a lot more intensity. "Yeah, the shoulder blade. Go on."

The older man clamped the pipe stem between his teeth. "The wound was messy. Fire was used to close it."

Rodney grimaced, and without realizing it, reached behind himself to rub his own shoulder blade. The old man merely shrugged. "One wound of many. When we found him, he was fighting to live, against many wounds, against hunger, against pain and sickness. He barely lived. What happened to him was terrible, but the rest is locked away in his mind."

Rodney didn't like the sound of this, any of it. He opened his mouth to demand details: where was Sheppard found? How was he found? What kind of wounds? But the subject of their conversation had returned carrying a small metal pot by the handle using a cloth. A thin, older woman followed close behind handling a wooden tray of bowls, spoons, cups, a clay pitcher, and a clay plate of some kind of dark brown bread, and green mush like guacamole.

John set the pot by the fire, and the woman placed the tray by the pot. She straightened, dusting her hands, then placed one on John's sharp shoulder.

"Is that all?"

John nodded. The woman smiled at him maternally, flashing another smile to the old man and Rodney, then left. John eased himself to the floor, folding his legs Indian-style. He handed out the cups first, filling each with water from the pitcher. Next came the bowls with the spoons, with a thick, chunky brown stew ladled into each. He gave the first bowl to Rodney, then the old man. The stew smelled good, like beef stew, with huge pieces of meat and vegetables coated in a heavy broth. Rodney's stomach was already snarling at him. He looked up at John, who was blowing on a spoonful of stew before eating it.

Rodney pointed at his bowl. "No citrus, right?"

The old man squinted at Rodney in perplexity. John looked confused, but just for a moment before he perked up and shook his head. "No."

Rodney nodded, lifted his spoon, blew the stew cool, and took a bite. Flavor not too strong and not too weak attacked his mouth in an onslaught of pleasure that had his taste buds singing. He rolled his eyes, keeping the stew in his mouth for as long as he could.

"Oh... Oh, man, this is awesome." He took another bite, not even waiting for it to cool, and found himself enjoying both the flavor and the burning in his mouth. The stews and porridges at the castle had always been warm to lukewarm at best. And sour as old goat's milk. This stuff was thick, rich, and already making his stomach acid splash with joy.

John smiled in a pleased sort of way. He said nothing as they ate, just watched Rodney with an innocent sort of fascination bordering on Rodney being the greatest thing since sliced bread. And speaking of bread, John grabbed a slice and held it out for Rodney to take. When Rodney did, John picked up his own slice and dipped it into the green mash. Rodney gestured at the mash with his slice.

"What, huh... What is that?"

"Mash forkora root," the old man croaked.

"No citrus," John promised him.

Rodney twisted his mouth in uncertainty. John seemed quite sure of his statement, but the man was suffering some kind of amnesia that Rodney wasn't going to trust. So he touched the tip of his pinky finger to the green food and watched for red welts to form.

Nothing happened, not even so much as an itch. Shrugging, Rodney dipped his bread into the mash, just the corner, and took a bite. The stuff even tasted like guacamole, and the bread like regular rye. Toss in some sauerkraut and roast beef, and this could have made one hell of a Reuben sandwich.

John smiled another pleased smile and resumed his unwavering vigil of Rodney's eating habits. At first, Rodney was too engrossed in the first real filling food he'd had for months to really care. After his stomach settled from gastronomic rapture, however, he began to squirm from the discomfort of being perpetually watched by a man who was supposed to be dead.

What was really starting to get to him, though, was the lack of conversation during this meal. Granted, Sheppard wasn't always a chatty guy, but this was just unnervingly ridiculous. Rodney had at least expected more questions from John concerning where he came from, who he really was, that sort of thing.

Rodney had a couple of questions of his own, and sifted through each deciding where to start. He went ahead with the question that nagged to be asked above all others.

"Do you know who I am?"

"Rodney McKay," John said.

Rodney shook his head. "No, no, no. I mean, do you know anything about me? What I do for a living? Why I know you?"

John just stared at him blankly.

Rodney's shoulders sagged. "Uh-huh. Thought so. Not to sound ungrateful or anything, I'm just finding it mind-bogglingly ironic that of all the people dashing around that castle, that you," Rodney pointed at John, "the formerly deceased John Sheppard and current acquaintance of mine, happened to save me when you don't even know who I am. I mean, maybe it was coincidence, but I usually don't give into coincidences unless I'm too tired to care any more."

John's smile was gone, and so was the fascination. In fact, he was starting to go a little panicky, looking at the old man, then back to Rodney as though they had an explanation.

The old man's mouth curved in a thin grin around the stem of his pipe. "You ask the good questions, Rodney McKay. Sky-wanderer would answer you if he could, but he does not know the answer." The old man snickered softly and clasped John on the shoulder. "Since he became well enough to take part in our hunts, his feet have always brought him to the fortress where you were kept. He did not know why. All he knew was that there was something there of importance. So I told him, 'Sky-wanderer, when the time is right, you must go there and seek this thing of importance.' 'When will the time be right?' he asked me. 'You will know when you see,' I told him. Then came the army, so we waited and watched until the siege. Sky-wanderer slipped in when all on the walls were occupied. The rest you know."

Rodney looked back to John, still waiting in silent, hopeful anticipation for the answers that flowed through his fingers like water.

"Huh," Rodney said thoughtfully. His brain tossed out questions, and at the same time answered them. "Well, obviously his mind hasn't completed it's journey over the Cuckoo's nest. He must still retain some memories. Bits and pieces, nothing coherent." Rodney set aside his bowl so he could hold up his fingers. "Familiarity, deja vu. He must have been at the fortress some time. Saw me there." Rodney's brow wrinkled in perplexity. "But I never saw him. Okay, maybe he wasn't dead, woke up, followed us... But that was a hell of a long ride - he wouldn't have survived, it let alone kept up. It took us five days just to get there..." Rodney shook his head and pressed his lips into a straight line. " I don't know. If he was there, I never saw him. Where'd you say you found him?" he asked the old man.

"I didn't," the old man replied. "But we found him beyond the walls of the fortress we are speaking of."

Rodney felt the blood leave his face so fast, he thought for sure he was going to pass out. "Outside the fortress... injured. Oh. My. Gosh." He looked at John more closely, eying him up and down. His stomach twisted into tight knots. "Oh, my gosh, no. No way. No freakin' way..."

It all made such perfect sense that Rodney nearly regurgitated his dinner. Foresk, that heavy-handed SOB, was wicked when it came to disciplining servants. Those not of servant status, brought in for interrogation and punishment... Rodney had never seen the aftermath up close, just the bodies that littered the desert when Foresk was done with them. Others had seen, though. Seen and refused to speak as they nearly threw up their own meals in doing so.

What they did manage to spit out was short, bitter, and enough to make Rodney's skin crawl for weeks on end. No wonder Sheppard couldn't remember a damn thing. A coping mechanism was what Heightmeyer would call it. John's brain had shut down rather than endure what was being done to him. Or at least, Rodney assumed. He knew his mind had tried to go blank every time Foresk had taken a whip to him, and that had been Foresk playing nice.

The anticipation on John's face morphed into consternation, then fear, then panic that had his body shaking.

"What do you know?" John asked in a small, uncertain tone.

Rodney shook his head numbly. "Nothing you want to know. Nothing I can really answer, either." Rodney held up his hand. "Look, it doesn't matter. Probably better you don't remember anything anyway since chances are you will eventually and not like it. What matters is that you're alive..." Rodney stiffened with a thudding heart. "And we can go home."

John blinked, and the panic tumbled away back to confusion. "Home?"

"Yeah, home. I know you probably don't remember home right now, but don't you want to go home? Because I can take you there, I can take you home. Well, there's the little matter of not having a GDO, but a GDO isn't needed for the Alpha site and Elizabeth always has someone hanging around there so... Sheppard?"

Rodney was never quick on the uptake, and he would admit to that. He hadn't seen Sheppard shift into a new position, bringing up his legs to wrap his arms around as he stared with a glazed, vacant look at the floor. He was gnawing his bottom lip, then gave that up to mouth the word GDO, over and over as though testing the feel of the letters on his tongue, seeking out their familiarity. But after about two minutes, his brow creased in consternation.

"Sheppard?" Rodney prodded.

Sheppard's head shot up. "Huh?"

"Do you want to go home?"

Rodney would have never thought to ever have to ask that question. Home was a given. After going through any type of hell, all Sheppard ever wanted to do was go home and forget it happened. Home was the end of the rainbow after a long, freakish day of adventuring. So it was a given that when home was mentioned, no questions were asked, and home they went.

Home had never been anything else but Atlantis. Maybe Earth on occasion, but mostly Atlantis. Except John didn't remember Atlantis. As far as he was concerned, this cave and these people were home. Rodney had the feeling John knew well enough that this wasn't his home. It was, however, all he currently knew, making real home more a concept than an actual place, possibly a scary concept for someone who couldn't even recall his own name.

So Rodney wasn't surprised to see indecision inching toward another bout of panic in Sheppard's eyes. It was painful to see, and a little scary. A regular, incorrigible Sheppard Rodney could handle with ease. A lost, confused, frightened Sheppard was strange territory Rodney would rather not tread. It was time to face facts: Sheppard was in a mentally fragile state that could have him shattering at any moment, and Rodney had no idea what to do except drag him home where he would definitely crack under the onslaught of the achingly familiar.

Sheppard began rubbing the side of his head with a shaking hand. "Home?"

Chances were good he was going to shatter right here and now. Rodney felt his chest clench in flooding panic. "Well," he stammered. " It's not something you have to decide right now..."

John began rocking. "Home." He shook his head while still digging the heel of his hand into his temple. "Home..."

The old man unfolded from his position as smoothly as a waking cat. He rose just as smoothly despite his slight grimace and creaking bones, and reached down to Sheppard, taking him by the arm. "Come, Sky-wanderer. You should rest. The day was long, and you are weary and injured."

Rodney went rigid. " Injured? How? Where? Why?"

No one responded to him verbally. The answer came when Sheppard's sleeve slid down his shoulder, revealing a ragged brown bandage around the biceps. The old man led John to the stairway entrance across the way and left him to descend on his own. Then the native returned, easing his withered body back to the floor by the fire and resuming his smoking.

Rodney longed for a hole to crawl into and hide away. He settled for gaping and an abashed expression. "Sorry, I'm... I didn't mean..."

The old man swatted the air dismissively. "No reasons for sorry. You gave him much of what he longed for. A name, for a start. He is simply overwhelmed. He has stumbled in the darkness of his mind for a long time. Your coming, with your answers and offers of home, is like stepping out of the darkness into the sunlight. Have you ever stepped from darkness into light, Rodney McKay? After knowing nothing but darkness for so long? It is painful to the eyes. Agonizing sometimes. It will take time for him to adjust. Sometimes he recalls things. Some good, some bad, others terrible. He cannot take the light all at once, Rodney McKay. He must adjust to it, or it will hurt him. Have patience with him until then. You presence will help guide him from the darkness."

Rodney lifted his eyebrows in sincere admiration. "Wow. Good analogy. Hey, I didn't even get your name."

The old man gave Rodney a lazy grin. "Most call me Old One. I prefer Hemmin."

Rodney nodded. "Hemmin. Okay, Hemmin it is. I suppose it's only proper that I thank you for saving my friend's life, Hemmin."

Smoke billowed from Hemmin's nostrils. "He saved his own life. I merely helped him."

Rodney chuckled hysterically and muttered, "Why am I not surprised?"

"Why aren't you?"

"Because I'm starting to think Sheppard arm wrestles Death and wins every time. It's easy to assume he has no problem with giving up his own life – which he doesn't – but he does fight tooth-and-nail not to die. I think he does it just out of spite, mostly toward the ones he considers to be the bad guys."

Rodney stared into the twisting orange and yellow flames that guttered and danced. It was a hypnotic show, making him a little drowsy. Hemmin blew smoke rings of various sizes that floated up and away into oblivion. Even with so many people in it, the cavern was quiet, all sound a distant murmur that was easy to dismiss as not really being there. The cave itself smelled of water, rock, smoke, the spices of the stew, and baking bread.

Rodney felt a conflicting mix of easement and fear. He was free, he was full, he was safe, and Sheppard was alive. Sheppard freakin' alive. Rodney couldn't wrap his brain around it and it was making him a little giddy, despite him also being exhausted. He was optimistic – for real this time – that Sheppard's memory could be retrieved. If the colonel remembered Rodney enough to save him, then there was memory left to save Sheppard.

What Rodney feared was exactly what Sheppard would remember.

Hemmin had directed Rodney to the cave where the colonel would be resting, but left Rodney to do the actual finding of Sheppard. It was a long, annoying trudge up the slick stairs to the top-most caves. Rodney muttered, cursed, and griped all the way over the woeful lack of technological advances on these backwater rocks that would lead to inventions such as escalators.

Sheppard's literal hole-in-the-wall was dimly lit by a single glass lamp hanging from the cave ceiling. Sheppard himself was a curled lump beneath several layers of woven blankets, breathing evenly.

Rodney picked his way around the clutter of pillows and blankets, grabbing a few and shaking them out, then setting up his own bed on the other side of the dead fire pit. His eyes kept flicking to Sheppard, who had his back to Rodney.

Maybe it was morbid curiosity that compelled him to move to the colonel, or the need to confirm a fact. Rodney gritted his teeth as he knelt behind his slumbering friend, pulling back the blankets from John's neck, then gingerly tugging at the collar of the shirt. Rodney was pretty much risking his own ass doing this. Sheppard had the reaction time and agility of a pouncing tiger with the temperament of a Tasmanian Devil when it came to being disturbed from sleep.

Rodney didn't care. He had to know for certain.

The light wasn't much, but it was enough for what Rodney needed to see: a crosshatch of jagged scars and scabs all over Sheppard's bony upper back. Not thin, precise whip scars; uneven, huge welts, like something a chain would make.

Rodney gritted his teeth and looked away to the floor. He kept his gaze down as he readjusted Sheppard's blankets, then looked back when his body was covered, and gripped his upper arm. Touchy/feely Rodney was not, but his mind screamed for tangibility, making him forget his aversion. Rodney was a man of science. He relied on his senses, and right now sight wasn't enough. He needed to _feel_ that Sheppard was real, alive, and to shut up his hysterical mind that kept insisting how impossible this was supposed to be. Rodney squeezed the thin arm lightly, feeling bone.

_My gosh, he's alive. Freakin' alive._ It made Rodney want to laugh hysterically and cry like a five-year old. Since he couldn't decide between the two, he ended up staring in stunned silence.

He wasn't alone. Sheppard was alive.

Rodney released John's arm and crawled back to his own makeshift bedding.

All this time. Sheppard had been under Rodney's nose all this time, where death looked better and better everyday. It made Rodney's gut churn thinking about it, and his skin try to crawl off his bones.

He slipped beneath the covers of his bed.

He sincerely hoped John didn't remember, even if that meant never remembering anything ever again.

-----------------------------

_They held him down by his arms and legs. Hands clamped his wrists and his ankles, pushing them into solid ground. They stretched him to the ripping point, to just where he thought his arms would pop out of the sockets and his spine would split. He heard the hiss of heat on metal, saw the hell-red glow out of the corner of his eye. The heated iron bobbed toward him like a mutant firefly. It hovered over his bare chest as though indecisive, and began to sway back and forth._

Then it stopped, its mind made up. The branding iron turned, business-end down. The breath caught in John's throat. The iron plunged, landing right on the vulnerable flesh of the solar plexus.

John gasped, arching his back and spreading his ribs until his lungs had no more room to expand. Fading pain danced over his back like tendrils of electricity that quickly fizzled out. John dropped back to the hard surface and winced at the impact to his still tender bones. He slipped his hand beneath his shirt and traced the scarred skin beneath his sternum.

A circle and a symbol that was a language he couldn't read. Someone's name, someone's right to ownership of him, in case he didn't die. That's what Hemmin had told John when he explained why John needed to keep the brand covered at all times. Property was property, dead or alive, and no one liked to lose property.

John shuddered and snatched his hand away. The brand kept him from being as free as Hemmin had promised.

John rolled his head toward his companion, sleeping on the other side of the fire pit. It was surreal to the point of creating a headache how John both knew that face yet had never seen it before. Misty memories flickered beyond reach, and his attempt to grasp at them made his brain a rather unhappy organ. Sometimes there was pain – small spikes of it like needles through his skull – but mostly it was vertigo, swirling the memories like mixing colored sands.

The man McKay made his head spin and tilt without warning. But, damn it, John was going to remember something. His name, for starters. The familiarity of it had increased to the point that he felt comfortable calling himself John. This rank thing – this Lieutenant Colonel – continued to remain foreign to him.

John threw aside the blankets but kept a grip on them as he rose. He hurried to the ledge, where the wind tried to yank the blankets from his hand. He pulled the blankets tight around his body and crouched with his back against the rock face that dug into his spine. The air was cold, sharp, almost arctic, and doing the job of slapping him awake. He sucked in frigid wind and shivered when it stung his throat and lungs. The high places always cleared his head, and the cold air kept him awake.

Home.

This place was home, as far as he realized. Could have been home forever if not for a constant niggling discomfort in the back of his mind making him feel like a stranger in the only place he knew. It was easy to forget the doubt in the waking world, among people, chores, and tasks like hunting for food and water. Then, when the night came and he was alone, he would awaken and not recognize a damn thing in his surroundings. He would forget what had become as familiar to him as his own skin, which was enough to remind him he didn't belong here.

John shivered from more than just the cold. He glanced over his shoulder at the mound of blankets hiding the familiar stranger.

Home.

Sometimes, when he'd attempted to force his memory to dredge up something he could grasp, he thought he could hear a sound, like the whispering rush of water only rhythmic rather than constant. An ocean rather than a river, and that was all he knew when he tried to think about real home. Other than that, real home was nothing but a ghost whispering constant reminders he didn't belong.

John looked from Rodney to the desert that melded with the sky where the horizon should have been. If his heart pounded any harder, it was going to burst out of his chest.

He didn't know what to do. The home he knew wasn't real, and the home that was real he didn't know.

"You are going to get sick again," croaked a parchment-dry voice, "if you insist on coming out here every night."

John scooted a little to the side, giving Hemmin a place to sit. The old man grunted and groaned as he eased his noisy bones down onto the cold, hard ledge.

"Same to you if you keep insisting on sitting out here with me. Why do you do that, anyway?" John looked over at Hemmin, a hill of brown blankets capped by wild white hair whipping in the wind.

"The young appreciate my stories, not my company. You are the only one who does. And solitude is not good for a man. Not constant solitude, not for a man who is wandering."

John rested his chin on his upturned knees. " I thought I would remember home before I had to return home."

"No one said you had to return. It is your choice to stay or go. I told you this. My people have become comfortable with you. They see you as one of us without question." Hemmin gestured with his weathered hand at the desert and the sky. "You did not stumble when we showed you our ways. You walk the sands as one who has always walked the sands. You would do well here."

"But it's not my home."

"No. That does not mean it couldn't be."

John rolled his head, facing Hemmin. "Are you asking me to stay?"

Hemmin smiled. "I am providing you with options. You are not as lost as you think yourself, Sky-wanderer. You have paths before you."

John rolled his head back to his chin and sighed. " Only two."

"Two is good. One home or the other."

John moved his arms from his legs to wrap around his stomach, and slid his face to rest his forehead on his knees. " It's just... it came so fast. The options, I mean. When I saved that man... Uh, when I saved Rodney..." John chuckled nervously. "I had no frickin' idea what I was doing. I saw a face in my head, that fortress, and it just felt like something I had to do. I was even kind of stupid enough to believe that my memory would come rushing back as soon as I did it. But it didn't, and now Rodney's talking about going back to a place that... that I might as well say I've never been to before. Not that I don't want to go. I want my damn life back, whatever it was. It's... It's..."

It was something he couldn't articulate. It was change. It was the unknown. It was what he wanted but didn't know if he was ready for. He'd become used to his current way of life that was predictable and certain. There was no saying what he was going back to if he returned to his real home, and that spooked him.

For all he knew, he'd ended up on this world after being chased from his own. Rodney hadn't mentioned anything along those lines, but he hadn't gone into too many details before John's head had started spinning.

John felt a strong grip on his arm even through the blanket.

"It's the path you have been seeking, John Sheppard."

John snapped his head around at Hemmin. Hemmin patted John's arm before pulling his wrinkled hand back into the blankets. "Remember that," he said. He then rose with more grunts and groans, and shuffled back into the warmth of the cave.

John looked away, resting his chin back on his knees.

Damned if the old man wasn't right.

---------------------------------

John had just started another fire when Rodney finally stirred, lifting his sleep-heavy head and blinking red-rimmed eyes. John tossed on more logs, raising a cloud of sparks and a flare of flames.

"About time you woke up," he said. "Get your sandals on. You can help us get water after breakfast."

Rodney sat up, rubbing grit and sleep from his eyes. "You save my ass from slavery just to make me a slave?"

John smiled. He was pretty sure he should have been annoyed by Rodney's statement. Instead, he found it amusing. Even if the man didn't jog any memories, at least he'd be good for a laugh or two. "I said help us, not do it yourself. The number one rule when it comes to living among the Indaani is that you'd better be ready to pull your weight."

Rodney wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and scooted closer to the fire. He held his hands palm-out to the flames, rubbing them together intermittently. "Is that the name of these people? Indaani?"

"It means-"

"Shadows, I know. I've heard the stories. The caravan that can't be found. Most think they're ghosts."

John shrugged. "They're just really good at hiding their tracks. There's no safer group to hang with on this world than the Indaani. Come on, get up, get moving, and you'll get warm. We need to grab breakfast before we head out."

Rodney mumbled something about unearthly hours to be doing physical labor, but hauled his stiff body from the cold ground, shedding the blanket to pool on the floor. He kicked it back with his heel so no stray sparks would catch it on fire. Not like it mattered. Blankets caught all the time, but the rock floors and walls didn't give the flames many places to go. John led the way from the cave and down the stairs to the main cavern. Fires were already lit, and pots bubbled with either leftover stew or gana mash.

John headed to the nearest pot, where he was handed a bowl by Insa, a middle-aged woman who treated John like a son. Most of the Indaani women showed him maternal kindness, and he suspected it had something to do with surviving what he shouldn't have survived. No one ever went into details, and what John knew he'd learned from snatches of conversation while eavesdropping.

Another bowl was handed to Rodney, and the two left the cooking fire to let others gather at the pot. The Indaani way was to work as one to support all. The women cooked and cleaned, the men hunted, and both genders defended. Not that there was ever a need to defend. The Indaani really were like shadows. They knew how to move and travel in ways that left everyone else questioning their existence.

"You know, with all the good food around here," Rodney said, "one would think you'd be a little less bony."

John shot a cockeyed glance over his shoulder. " Huh?"

Rodney pointed at his bowl of mash with his spoon. "Food. Plenty. And yet I can still see your ribs even with your shirt on."

John looked down at himself, holding his bowl in one hand and smoothing his shirt with the other. Now that comment felt a little insulting. Yes, he could feel his own bones, but it wasn't as though he were emaciated or anything. He was strong, could carry two buckets of water, keep up with the hunting parties as they crept across the desert like spirits, and remain perfectly still for hours when hiding from raiders or giant sand vipers. He had the strength he needed to survive, and that was all that mattered.

"The grain finally ripened," John explained. "Last month we were surviving mainly on whatever meat we could find."

"Oh," Rodney said, sounding chastised. "Where do you grow these grains? Last I heard, sand didn't make for good farm-land."

John waved his hand around. "These caves. There are areas with open ceilings and soil where crops can be grown. Caves are like oases that never run dry. But that doesn't mean living in them makes life any easier. There come bad months and good."

"Huh," Rodney said. "Underground oases." He began muttering about things like wind and water erosion, decay, and insects like alien worms turning all of the above into nutrient-rich soil. They wandered as they ate, and John introduced Rodney to the few people he knew. He wouldn't have called himself anti-social. More like anti-interesting. It wasn't like he had a lot of material to start a conversation with, let alone hold one for long periods. The dark holes of his mind where memories should have been, and the misty images that moved too fast for him to grasp, sometimes made him nervous. Talking didn't help bring them to light, just rubbed in his face what wasn't there. He let others do the talking as he listened and learned. The people here understood the reason behind his quiet nature and respected it.

When breakfast was finished, they joined the vast majority of the Indaani sixteen and up, who gathered deeper into the cavern where a wooden pulley hauled buckets of water from a black abyss.

Rodney was wheezing before they even got to the tunnel. "I refuse to rescind my slave comment."

John peered over his shoulder at a red-faced and sweaty McKay. " What did they have you doing at the fortress?"

Rodney's breath caught and he coughed. "S-science stuff. Slapping together formulas. N-not carrying stuff... that weighs twice as much... as I do."

John smiled. "You're exaggerating. But it's not like we're in a hurry. We can rest."

They moved to the wall and pressed against it. Rodney nearly dropped his buckets, and slid down the wall to the floor. "Physical labor... not my thing... never was."

John set his buckets down more gently and lowered himself beside Rodney. He just stared at Rodney while a tug of familiarity tried to rope a memory from his recalcitrant conscious. Rodney a little soft around the middle, but not weak. Couch. Science was better when done from a couch. _Why'd you have to park the jumper so far away?_ Different versions of the question echoed in John's mind, then they were gone.

Rodney rolled his sweat-plastered head toward John. "What?"

John looked quickly away at the floor. "Nothing. Sorry."

"Were you remembering something?"

John shook his head. He never really remembered, just started to remember, like catching snatches of conversation from a distance. Words, nothing more, meaningless without context. It mostly frustrated John; other times it depressed him.

"What's home like?" he asked.

"Sure it's a good idea for me to just tell you? I wasn't even reiterating you your life's story last night and you looked ready to pass out."

John shrugged noncommittally. "Don't tell me everything, then. Bits and pieces first. What is home? Physical appearance. Is it a village, a town? Is it like here?"

Rodney sighed. "I could really get into a whole spiel about where home is, but the home you prefer is a city on the sea."  
"Don't you mean, by the sea?"

"No," Rodney replied a little snappishly. "On. It floats. Lots of towers, spires, metal halls, bubbling pillars. Pretty in an aesthetic sort of way. Has a thing for you..."

"How can a city of metal have a 'thing' for me?"

Rodney scowled. "Bits and pieces, remember? One thing at a time here - I don't want your brain doing a "Scanners" thing on me."

A rather disturbing yet fake image of a man's head exploding in a spray of blood popped into John's head, and he flinched.

"Did anyone's head ever _explode_?" he asked abruptly.

Rodney's scowl became perplexed. "What?" Then the scowl returned. "No! What..." He squinted thoughtfully. "Do you sometimes have, I don't know, odd images or ideas or words pop into your head? Stuff that has you thinking, _Now where the hell did that come from?_ or _What did that have to do with anything?_ Something like that?"

John stared at Rodney, at a loss. "I... I think a lot of things that don't make sense. Some of it... Yeah, some of it I get the feeling isn't real. Like it happened to someone else and I witnessed it. Or... they told me about it. Or I must have dreamed it because it's too freakin' weird..."

Rodney winced, sympathetically, it seemed, which only incited John's growing confusion that was slinking toward unease.

"What?" he demanded.

Rodney shook his head but kept the expression of sympathy. " Nothing. I mean, nothing you have to worry about. There's a good chance some of the stuff you're recalling isn't real. We have this form of entertainment we call movies – uh, images projected on something flat like a wall. They tell stories through pictures. Anyways, you love 'em... these picture-stories I mean. So you've got a lot of them rattling around in that skull of yours probably butting into all the legit memories trying to break through."

John perked up and beamed. "Songs, too? I'm always thinking of these songs the Indaani have never heard of, like this one about a ring of fire..."

Rodney snapped his fingers. "Johnny Cash. Yeah, songs too, it seems." Then he shook his head. "Man, I'd hate to be in your head right now."

John looked away again, back at the ground. There were times he despised being in his own head. Lots of times. In fact, there was barely a moment when he didn't mind what was going on in his skull. Most of the fleeting images he could handle. Others scared the hell out of him, and he could only hope they were merely products of these story telling images.

Some of them John knew were real, because they came hand-in-hand with distant sensations of pain, and he doubted an image had the power to incite pain.

"You all right?" Rodney asked. His tone was concern and a smear of impatience, but there was a little fear beneath the surface of it. John heard Rodney release a long breath. " Sorry. I shouldn't have said that. The 'being in your head' thing. Kind of a redundant and stupid thing to say, which is rather ironic since I'm supposed to be a genius. I'm good with what's in my head, just not with what comes out of my mouth. Never have been and I doubt I ever will be."

That sounded about right. John didn't know why - it was just a feeling, an opinion, and a rather rude one as far as he was concerned. But chances were good there was some fact to it. At least, he honestly hoped there was, or else he was simply making snap assumptions.

People continued to drift by with their load of water sloshing from the buckets to stain the gray rock black.

Rodney cleared his throat. "So... last night, when I was going on and on about home until your head nearly did go Scanners on me... have you given it any more thought? Going home? Not to rush you or anything but I'd really, really love to go home. There's just this little matter of possibly showing up without you, then having to explain to everyone how you're alive but stayed behind due to memory lapses..."

John closed his eyes. "Home was something I thought I'd have to worry about finding when I remembered what home was."

"And now?"

John opened his eyes. "How did we end up on this world?"

"The way we end up on any world. Exploration, trade, danger, enemies popping out of the woodwork like deranged Jack-in-the-Boxes..."

John looked at Rodney desperately. "But not because we were kicked off our world or anything, right?"

Rodney's brow wrinkled. "No. I can honestly say that has yet to happen to anyone. Besides, we wouldn't get kicked off onto another planet, we'd get kicked off to another galaxy, but that's a trip down memory lane for another time, as I still don't trust your skull staying in one piece."

John nodded. "Just... making sure of something. But that's the other thing. What happened to me last night, all that stuff you were talking about. I was starting to remember things, except too much and too fast. All this stuff just started shooting through my head. Not that it hasn't happened before, just not that much that fast. Sometimes I start to remember, then get dizzy, then forget again. Last night was the worst. What happens when we get home and I still don't remember? What do you think that'll do?"

John honestly wanted to know, as he wasn't sure if it was possible for a man's head to explode or not. His head had certainly felt ready to explode last night, and he'd been fortunate his dinner had remained in his stomach.

Even in the meager light of passing lamps and natural skylights overhead, John still managed to see Rodney's face drain of color. "Good point. At least a headache I would surmise."

"And at most?"

Rodney's mouth twisted and he shrugged abashedly. " A hemorrhage?"

"That's bad, right?"

"Oh, yeah. But it's also only a theory. I'd bet more money on a splitting headache and possibly passing out. Look, it's not like if we started out today, we'd be home in an hour. You and I both know it'll take a few days to find the stargate - "

"The what?"

"Ring, Ancestor ring, gate..."

"The star bridge?"

Rodney stared at him blankly for a moment before speaking again. " Yeah, whatever. We know it'll take time to find the damn thing, giving your memory a chance to dredge up a few recollections. I mean if being around me while I'm talking about GDOs starts kicking your mind into gear, that means your brain is trying, and there's a good chance with a little coaxing it'll come through. If not, then you can leave me at the gate and head back until your brain finally decides to cooperate. We'll even toss through a GDO for when you're ready to return. I don't mind having to explain everything to everyone and I'm pretty sure Beckett would understand. He's a doctor, he gets this sort of stuff."

Beckett. Images flashed, flickered, then vanished, although not before John thought he heard a voice with a strange accent calling him "lad." He winced when the vertigo hit, tilting the world, and a small thread of pain shot through his skull.

"Oh, damn, sorry," Rodney said, and John was clearly able to picture the man's sheepish grimace.

When the vertigo and pain passed, John grabbed his buckets and pushed himself to his feet.

"We need to get back, fill the well."

He heard Rodney's small, annoyed grunts behind him, followed by the man's heavy breathing as they let themselves be swept into the flow of the rest of the water bearers.

"And home?" Rodney pressed.

John glanced over his shoulder. "Let me think about it."

---------------------------

The water buckets were emptied into the natural wells throughout the main cavern. After that, John showed Rodney around the rest of the caverns, such as where the crops were grown and animals kept. There was a place in the opposite direction of the river and further into the caves where hot springs bubbled up, forming pools in the pockmarked ground. These the Indaani used for bathing and washing clothes. As Rodney took advantage of the pools to clean up, John brought him clothes: an old white shirt, brown trousers with a rope belt, and sandals.

"Itchy," Rodney remarked. "But a hell of a lot better than a drafty robe. Things tended to get a little chilly in, um... certain places... Never mind, actually."  
John grinned. " Definitely never mind."

Next, John showed him the lake where blind fish swam. He removed his own sandals, hiked up his trousers to his knees, and waded out nearly to the center. He watched the ink-dark water for the phosphorescent bodies. He saw one and felt it brush his leg with its cold body, then reached down as though about to pluck a flower and instead plucked the fish, holding it up for Rodney to see.

"That easy," he said.

Rodney hooked his thumbs into his belt. "Kind of takes the fun out of it, though, if you can call sitting in a boat for hours on end until your ass goes numb, fun."  
John chuckled softly and tossed the fish back.

After the lake, John showed Rodney the caves of crystal that shimmered and winked in the light of the lamp he'd brought. Rodney's jaw was slack as they moved through corridors that sparkled like distant starlight.

"Oh, wow... Wow, wow, wow."

John smiled. He felt a small surge of pride at being able to show someone else these things that had once amazed him. It was like having a secret either no one cared to hear or everyone already knew, and finally finding someone who both cared and did not know.

He also felt a surge of warmth at having a friend who was just as much a stranger to this place as Sheppard had been. A friend who was of his world, even though Sheppard recalled nothing of that world. Even without recollection, the sense that he belonged in the same world as Rodney was enough to feel relief at having him around. Rodney radiated familiarity in everything he did and said, and even though it was overwhelming at times, the rest of the time John found it comfortable, like the warmth of the hot springs. It had given him something to look forward to, to hope for, and to seek.

But the seeking part he remained reluctant about. He wasn't sure if he was ready, not this soon.

----------------------

John stared into the flickering, writhing flames of the fire that tossed living shadows on the wall. Sleep for John was fickle. Some nights it came without warning, others nights – no matter how tired he was - it shuffled about awkwardly beyond reach like a timid child. It did that when John was reluctant to sleep because of the dreams.

He rubbed the spot between his ribs where the flesh had been burned. He could feel the scarring through the threadbare cloth of the shirt. It itched sometimes; other times it stung a little. All in all, it never let him forget it existed.

Would his people know what it meant? Would Rodney? John was certain beyond a doubt Rodney would never turn him in to the one who had branded John. Rodney knew what pain was; John had seen the old whip scars on the other man's back. It was the people he did not know, with familiar names and blurred faces, that he wasn't certain about. Something in John whispered they would never turn him in either. John wasn't so sure. If he went back, he would have to keep the mark hidden.

John would have asked Rodney, but that would have meant showing him the mark. He didn't want Rodney to know in the off chance it would somehow, in the far-flung future or sooner, get him into trouble.

John couldn't be sure of anything, so resigned himself to playing it safe and keeping his mouth shut. Ownership of any kind was taken very seriously on this world. Men had been beheaded because of it.

John stabbed at the fire with a thin log. To change the subject of his thoughts, he sifted through the mess of odd words Rodney kept tossing out: Stargate, Alpha site, Elizabeth, Beckett, Ronon, Teyla, Zelenka, sheep-herding, Scanners, GDO...

Garage Door Opener.

John squinted. Odd words, but familiar like everything else. Rodney had said to him that whenever anything odd – images or words – came into his head and stuck around, John could tell Rodney about them.

Except, Rodney was softly snoring beneath a pile of blankets on the other side of the fire.

Garage Door Opener. GDO. John wasn't sure what else the letters could stand for, and the curiosity was starting to drive him crazy. He crept around the fire to Rodney and shook the other man's shoulder.

"Rodney, wake up. Rodney!"

Rodney snorted, and one hand slipped out of the blankets to bat John's hand away. "Not now," he muttered.

John just shook harder. He wanted – needed – to know before he forgot. "Rodney!"

Rodney's sleep-heavy head snapped up, blinking against the firelight. "Wha...?"

"Garage Door Opener."

Rodney blinked again. "Huh?"

"Garage Door Opener. GDO."

" Yeah, so? I told you that." Rodney set his head back down.

John grinned. " No, you didn't."

Rodney lifted his head again. "I didn't?"

"Nope."

Rodney pushed himself up on one elbow. "Are you saying you just remembered something?"

John nodded excitedly. "Uh-huh." Remembered and had yet to pay the consequences for it. Recollection had come like a gentle whisper, and it made John's heart pound ecstatically.

"That was fast," Rodney said. Then both men began chuckling, little by little extending into laughter. Rodney clapped John on his thin shoulder and squeezed. "Better than nothing, I suppose," he said, grinning smugly.

"Maybe it's okay to go home now," John said.

Rodney's features softened. " You sure? There really isn't a big rush."

"I need to go. I need to try. We'll do like you said. If I remember, I remember. If I don't, then I'll wait. But I'm willing to try."

Rodney nodded and beamed. "All right, then. Home again, home again. So, when do we leave?"

------------------

The Indaani were always prepared for all manner of departure, whether on smaller hunting raids or larger treks to the town four days away. John and Rodney could have left that very morning if things hadn't felt as though they were moving too fast. John wasn't going to rush things unnecessarily.

"Better be careful," Rodney warned as they walked while eating a breakfast of porridge. "Tomorrow tends to be a loose term when it comes to the future. Could mean tomorrow, could mean in two months. I'd like to get home sometime in my lifetime but, seriously, no rush. Not if it's going to end up causing a blood vessel in your brain to pop that not even Carson's little voodoo skills can patch."

Voodoo, magic... or medicine. John scrunched up his nose as he tried to puzzle it out. Derogatory term. Voodoo was magic, medicine was not, but Rodney didn't care.

John smiled. Recollection came a little easier when it was odd phrases and terms Rodney brought up. Names and events sent John's mind on a whirlwind ride of images and feelings. Part of the problem, Rodney surmised, was association. Rodney mentioned a name, and rather than simply recalling the face behind the name, other events involving said face tried to muscle their way in. With events, it was more like a rush of a single memory coming in like water from a broken dam. It flooded, drowning John in images, feelings, and emotions that were all jumbled together rather than set in chronological order. There would be an image of him in some kind of machine talking amiably to someone, yet he would feel fear. Monsters with pale skin and hair and sharp teeth would charge at him, and he wanted to laugh.

Too much, too soon. John didn't understand why it was so hard for his memory to right itself. He had the feeling there was something there, something bigger buried under the mess of memories, and that recalling even small snippets of his past would unearth that something. It would explain why the bigger recollection onslaughts always left him shivering. But it was also just a theory. There could be more than one bad something his mind was trying to keep hidden.

John scraped the last vestiges of porridge from the bowl, then licked the spoon – and the bowl – clean.

"Wow," Rodney said. " You people really take that 'waste not, want not' platitude serious."

John shrugged. "I remember what it's like to be hungry, even though I don't remember when I was hungry." Sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night with his stomach tight and aching with emptiness, begging him to fill the pit, only to have the ache give way to nausea for no explicable reason, all thoughts of food vanishing.

His body was being just as cryptic as his mind.

They headed toward the nearest table to deposit their bowls, then ambled away.

"I'll make a promise – vow," John said. "Biggest, baddest one the Indaani have. On my body and soul, we'll depart tomorrow." He then spit on the floor and scraped the saliva with his foot.

Rodney's face twisted with disgust. "Oh, yes, let's make the hypoglycemic man who just ate sick. Wasn't there a lesser vow you could have made? One involving a simple handshake or crossing your heart?"

John shook his head. "Water's life out here. Not keeping my promise would be like a waste of life. So, officially, there's no turning back." John's gut twisted. "We depart tomorrow for home."

TBC...


	4. Ch 3

Ch. 3

Water was normally valued above food when it came to a journey. John, however, ensured equal amounts of both. Since bringing Rodney to the caves – although the man's face hovered between the known and obscurity - John had been constantly nagged by the feeling Rodney always needed something to eat, so long as it involved nothing sourly sweet flavored. The sour-sweet dilemma was cleared up when Rodney mentioned citrus, the need for food when he mentioned hypoglycemia.

John would get his memory back even if it happened one crumb at a time.

The black edaaka John had "borrowed" from the fortress, he now claimed as his own, and loaded the beast with water skins tied in bundles to the saddle. Rodney was given a light tan male edaaka carrying its own food satchels and a few other supplies. He also got a light-colored robe of thin cloth with a hood to protect him from the sun, and a cloak to use as a blanket for the frigid nights. John simply used the ragged robes and cloaks of the hunting party. During the day, the clothes were turned inside out, going from black and dark gray to light gray and almost white. Rodney was right about the 'waste not, want not' thing. Cloth wasn't easy to come by, and so was a multi-tasking item.

They were ready to depart while it was still dark and arctic outside. Hemmin and several of the hunting party followed John and Rodney to the entrance of the cave hidden behind high, jagged pillars of rock shaped like fangs. They stopped at the threshold, and as the hunting party helped Rodney made sure his edaaka's saddle and bags were secure, John turned to Hemmin.

Hemmin smiled fondly at the younger man."You are taking the largest of all the steps. How do you feel about that?"

John smiled shyly. "To be honest... terrified."

Hemmin chuckled and slapped John's shoulder lightly. "So you should be. You would not be a living being otherwise."

John rubbed the back of his neck in rising discomfort. An invisible band seemed to tighten around his chest. "Hemmin..." He was no good at heartfelt articulation, and suspected he never had been. "No words are going to cut it in expressing my gratitude for what you did. I don't know how, or even if, I could ever repay you. I know there's a lot of blanks in my mind that need to be filled but... Sometimes I feel like – had it been anyone else – they wouldn't have done what you did. They would have left me to die."

Hemmin's smile remained fixed, but there was something melancholy about his gaze. The old man took the younger's hand and clasped it between his old wrinkled ones. "I can only hope this feeling is unfounded. Life is precious to our people. To lose it, whether the life of our own or a stranger, is a burden to the soul. To save it lifts the soul. You have done that for me, John Sheppard. You have lifted my soul. Living is your repayment to me."

John had been with the hunting parties when they picked through the bodies discarded like waste outside the fortress. Arrival was solemn, but departure when no living body could be found was heavy, pressing, as though the bodies had been known to each individual of the party. During the days that followed, Hemmin's smile would not reach his eyes.

Unless he looked at John. John just taking a deep breath was enough to make the old man happy. The depth of the Indaani's consideration for life both touched John deeply and riddled him with guilt.

Who the hell was he to warrant that kind of love from complete strangers? He didn't even know what kind of man he was, whether he deserved it or not. A part of him was afraid to know.

Hemmin patted John's hand affectionately before releasing it. "Good journey to you, Sky-wanderer," he said. Then he gave John a little shove as though making sure the younger man didn't change his mind. That got John smiling a little more sincerely.

John climbed into the saddle of the black edaaka and steered the creature around the wall of natural pillars. He led the way into the narrow canyon, like roofless corridors with walls of cream, tan, brown, and gray-striated rock. Rodney started rambling on about the canyons playing host to flooding during whatever passed for a monsoon season on this world, and how over millions of years the temporary rivers cut away the earth to create these canyons.

The clack of the edaaka's claws resounded sharp off the high walls like distant rifle shots. Rodney's ramblings shifted topic from erosion to minerals that made technology useless. After a moment, his one-sided conversation drifted off and he fell silent except for the occasional observational comment or complaint. Mostly complaint, and mostly about his ass going numb.

The narrow canyons remained relatively cool until the sun reached the sky's apex to shine directly on them. John called a halt when they came beneath the shade of an arch of rock. They had a quick lunch of midaki bread and white cheese, then resumed traveling when the sun was no longer in a position to beat down on them. They passed more arches of rock, and went through small tunnels and short caverns. When twilight came and the path became hard to see, John called another stop. They set up camp on the right side of the path and started a fire using the dry, skeletal shrubs that grew from the cracks in the ground, and dried edaaka dung. The shrubs released a pleasant scent Rodney compared to cedar, which covered the smell of the dung. The two men huddled in their heavy cloaks close to the fire, eating more bread and cheese.

"So, how much longer before we're out of this maze?" Rodney asked. He split his bread in half and put a chunk of the white cheese in between.

John had never gone that way through the canyons. He was used to the paths that led to the fortress, but Hemmin had told him the way to go, giving him a map drawn on tan leather and a compass. "Sometime tomorrow," he said, repeating what Hemmin had told him, "we'll come to the end and open desert. We cross the desert to the other side, where we reenter the canyons."

Rodney spoke around a mouthful of bread. "So, basically the whole trip's going to be one big tour of the mini-Grand Canyon."

Grand Canyon, canyons, big freakin' canyons, a place John felt he'd been to. He twitched his head to clear it before his train of thought tried to run away. "Yeah, something like that. We could just cut across open terrain, but it's safer to stick to the rocks. It's cooler, for one thing, and you don't have to worry about predators."

Rodney paused in taking his next bite of bread, his eyes snapping wide. "Predators?"

John tore off a chunk of bread and tossed it over his shoulder for his edaaka to catch. He heard the thing's jaw clack and a hiss of contentment. "Yeah, predators. Not that there aren't any predators in the canyons, they're just easier to handle than the ones out in the desert." John finished off the last of his meal, then wrapped his robe tighter around his body and stretched out on the ground, using his arm as a pillow. "Goodnight, Rodney."

"What? Goodnight? Wait, hold up. What predators, what kind?"

"The kind afraid of edaakas and fire. Go to sleep, Rodney. We're safe."

A cry echoed around them, keening and long. John heard Rodney's sharp inhale.

"Safe, my ass," he muttered, but John eventually heard the man shift. When John cracked open one eye, it was to see Rodney curled beneath his cloak facing away from the fire.

John smiled, finding Rodney's petulance rather comforting.

--------------------

They reached the end of the canyons an hour before midday. The narrow passage opened into a rippling ocean of sand shimmering with heat like water that could never be reached. Rodney tugged his hood over his head while snappishly pointing out the dangers of heatstroke and UV rays, and wishing he had his special blend of sun protection.

John pulled up his hood and fitted the skull mask down over his scalp. The skull with its long snout provided better protection than hoods. Rodney, however, had refused to have anything to do with it.

John exited the canyons first, urging his edaaka into a canter. The splayed edaaka feet with their thick toes pounded over the sand as though it were packed dirt. There was another animal that walked on the sand as though it were solid, an alien animal. Well, at least it would have been alien to this world, maybe even scary. Big, furry, so ugly it was almost cute, with a huge hump on its back.

"Hey, Rodney?" John called. " What's that animal, from our world, with the hump back? Lives in the desert?"

"Camel," Rodney replied. "Why?"

John shrugged. "I remember a lot of animals, just never their names. Well, not all the time. Sometimes I remember what the animal looks like and not the name, or the other way around."

"All right," McKay huffed. "I'm starting to think this memory loss thing is a nice little mix of mental trauma and a blow to the head. No way does mental trauma alone make you forget what a damn camel is."

John shrugged again but more helplessly. "I don't know why I have a hard time remembering crap, McKay. Stuff gets a little mixed up when I do start remembering, then I can't focus. Small things I can handle, like I knew I wasn't from this world and neither was a creature with a hump on its back. Yet for some reason I couldn't remember what that creature was called. I know there's an animal called a 'kangaroo,' I just can't remember what it looks like."

"Hops on two legs..."

"With long ears?"

"No, that's a rabbit, and they hop on four. Kangaroos hop on two, have pouches, seem to know kick boxing, or at least that one at the petting zoo did when I tried to feed it."

The image plowed into John's mind like an epiphany, and it made him chuckle. " Crap, I've been calling it a cat." The chuckling ascended from amusement to slight hysteria that had his heart pounding and the muscles of his back quivering. "What the hell is wrong with me?" John honestly wanted to know. Amnesia, forgetting, he knew all that, knew what it meant, but he had a feeling there was a little something extra to worry about when one could not keep the names of animals straight.

"Well," Rodney said, bringing his edaaka along-side Sheppard's and struggling to keep the beast from veering away, "drugging could have been involved. You realize – even if you don't recall – that you were tortured, right?"

John swallowed tightly and nodded. He'd seen his wounds weren't the kind inflicted by an animal.

Rodney tugged the reins sideways, bringing the cantering edaaka in closer. "If the guy who, you know, who roughed you up is the same guy who liked to shove me around, then chances are high he probably doped you up a few times. The only reason prisoners are kept is for interrogation purposes, and I worked with one of the guys who made the drugs used to loosen a few tongues. Not that they always worked, apparently, because that guy was always getting whipped. After a while..." Rodney trailed off for a moment. John glanced up to see him staring into the distant blue as he turned inward to thoughts he'd probably rather forget.  
Wasn't life ironic that way?

Rodney cleared his throat and kicked his edaaka to pick up the pace. "After a while... he killed himself. Overdosed on as many drugs as he could. So who knows what they pumped into you. Beatings, knock on the head, drugs; definitely a recipe for screwing up the mind."

John looked away back out over the sands. The twitching in his back radiated out to encompass every muscle until he was shivering, even in the heat.  
Maybe forgetting wasn't such a bad thing.

"Hey, Sheppard. You all right?"

John glanced at Rodney. The man was looking worried, so John nodded stiffly. "Yeah, just... thinking."

"Well, don't think too hard. This isn't exactly a good place to have you freaking out on me. Crap, how much farther? I'm gonna be a mummified husk before we reach those canyons. Hey, isn't it a bad sign when you haven't urinated in hours?" Rodney stood up in the stirrups for a moment, then plopped down. "I'm going to have saddle sores the size of my head by the time this is over. I did mention I burn easily, right? And don't those Indaani have some secret herbal concoction that beats the hell out of sun tan lotion? I thought primitive natives had secret recipes for everything..."

John tuned Rodney out until the other man's voice was a low drone, like a conversation in another room. His focus was on the sands, especially their rippling patterns. The canyons were not that far, Hemmin had said, and glancing up, John could see a thin line of darkness rising out of the horizon like gathering storm clouds. He returned his gaze to the sand, and caught the slight, almost imperceptible indention, like a shallow trench. He pulled hard on his edaaka's reins, forcing Rodney to stop talking and pull even harder.

"Whoa, whoa, what...!"

John held up his fist for silence.

"What?" Rodney demanded.

"Quiet!" John hissed. He listened into the silence. A weak wind rushed past his ears, tugging at the frayed end of his cloak. The edaakas' heaving breaths were like rushing bellows. He heard them shift their weight, heard the creak of leather when Rodney shifted his own weight, the musical chiming of the bridles, the slosh of water in the bladders, and the quiet thumping of his own heart.

Then he heard the hiss of sinking sand as something moved through it like an eel.

"Son of a bitch," he breathed. "Rodney, when I tell you, you kick your edaaka into a full-on charge. Don't ask any questions, just do it, and make sure you go where I go."

"What - ?"

"_Rodney!_"

"All right, bu - "

"Now!" John screamed, and kicked his edaaka hard. The beast reared up, keening and hissing, and when it thumped back to the ground, tore off over the sands. John shot a glance over his shoulder to see Rodney racing close behind. He shot his gaze forward just as a spade-shaped white head burst from the sand, rising on a serpentine neck. The sand viper opened a fanged mouth big enough to bite John in half and lunged down. John pulled a hard right on the reins, veering just as the head shot down to get a mouth full of sand.

"What the hell!" Rodney shrieked.

"Follow my lead!" John called back. He steered his edaaka in an erratic path that would prevent the viper from getting a clean shot. He chanced a glance over his shoulder to see Rodney doing the same.

The viper was out of sight, back beneath the sands.

"Damn it!" John spat. Sand vipers were smart, and it was always a safe bet to assume there was more than one around. The creatures utilized two tactics: divide and conquer, or drive their victims like those suicidal little rodents that liked to jump off cliffs to their doom.

John reached down to the sheath attached to his saddle and whipped out the machete like-blade. A split second after, another spade-shaped head baring its fangs burst out of the sand and lunged for John. John swiped at the mouth, and the viper reared back, shrieking and howling.

Rodney's edaaka increased its speed until it was neck-to-neck with John's. The canyon wall rose up from behind the horizon, close enough to look less like clouds and more like actual rock. John looked over his shoulder to see two white, leathery bodies winding toward them, fast.

"Sheppard!"

John looked forward. A third viper struck at them. Both edaakas reacted without command and veered sharply to either side. The snake passed harmlessly between the two, then curved around to join its kin in the chase.

"We'll be safe in the canyons!" John called.

"Those snakes can move on the surface! So how the hell are we going to ditch them in the canyons?"

"We're not!" The canyon wall loomed closer, and so did the hiss of the vipers, making the hairs on the back of John's neck stand on end.

"Come on," John begged his edaaka, squeezing its flanks with his heels. "Faster, faster..."

The canyon wall filled John's view like a dark amber obelisk. He could see the darker line splitting the rock face, creating the doorway into the canyon maze.

"John!"

John twisted his upper body while swinging out his arm, slicing at another lunging spade head. The snake reared back, but the other two continued on undeterred, now only three feet away.

Turning back, John could see the canyon entrance in all its detail, from the thin veil of sand moving along the smooth path to the multi-colored striations of the inner walls. Then they were through, pounding becoming clacking when claw met solid ground. John pulled hard on the reins. His edaaka reared, and the moment its front paws hit the floor, John jumped from the saddle, yelling for Rodney to do the same.

"But the edaakas...!" he yelled.

Both men turned to watch the edaakas stalk toward the canyon entrance with lips curled back baring very long fangs. The vipers milled and coiled just beyond the threshold, hissing and shuddering in agitation.

"What...?" Rodney said.

John held up a single finger. "Just wait."

The edaakas lowered their bodies into a partial crouch with backs curved and webbed manes bristling. The smallest, and probably youngest, of the vipers lashed out until its head was through the entrance. John's edaaka reared its head back, then lashed out in return, only with a lot better coordination than the young snake. The edaaka caught the snake by the neck, and, with the help of the second edaaka pulled it in. The two edaakas shook, tore, and stomped the snake. The snake shrieked, coiled, bucked, then finally shuddered before falling still, allowing the edaakas to dig in, taking chunks of leathery hide and swallowing them whole.

John gestured at the beasts. "The vipers are vulnerable in narrow spaces with no sand to dive into. They know better than to come in here... Well, most of the older ones do."

The two remaining vipers hissed and keened, then finally slunk off until they slipped back into the sand like albino whales. John smiled in relief and looked over at Rodney. McKay was looking slightly green and had his hand on his stomach.

"Oh, man, that's just... Oh, gosh..."

He ran to the side and leaned with one hand against the rockface as his body shuddered and constricted in noisy heaves. John looked on, sympathetic and disconcerted. After a few seconds of dry heaving, Rodney wiped his mouth and returned to Sheppard, only to look back at the feasting edaakas and bloody remains of viper. He promptly returned to the wall and resumed heaving.

After the edaakas had their fill of snake flesh, and Rodney a good helping of water, the two men mounted and continued on into the relative coolness and safety of the canyon corridor.

"How the hell did people even tame these monsters?" Rodney asked.

"How did we ever tame dogs?" John grinned smugly at being able to recall both animal image and name without help.

Rodney, still a little pale but no longer green, jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Why didn't you just let the edaakas take the snakes? Why the race?"

"The edaakas needed the advantage of the canyons. Two edaakas against three snakes in open desert is a losing combination." John patted his edaaka's neck, making the beast purr. "They may look like... uh, horses, right?"

"Yeah."

"They may look like horses, but they're as loyal as dogs. During hunts, we never left the canyons without a few edaakas following behind. Vipers usually only travel in pairs except for the family units like what we got back there. Just having three edaakas around usually keeps them back. We always brought five to play it safe."  
Rodney rubbed the side of his tanning face. "You really learned a lot from the Indanni."

"Their world became my world and the only world I knew. I learned fast. Kind of hard not to."

"So how much longer before we reach the gate?"

"Three more days, give or take. A day and a half in the canyons is what Hemmin said, then we reach the pass, which involves going through some caves. After that, a day through open desert that's not bad. Hemmin told me this canyon forms kind of a wall that keeps the vipers in. Plus, our route takes us by some oases. The real danger is the town, but I don't think I need to tell you that."

"Hell, no."

"Once there, we need to head straight to the gate."

"Way ahead of you there," Rodney said, mopping his sweaty face with his sleeve. "So, we're pretty much home free in terms of danger, right? Barring possible heatstroke and rock slides."

John twisted his mouth in sudden discomfort. "Well..."

Rodney froze in wiping his face. "Well? What well? What do you mean 'well'? No well. I hate well, and 'but,' 'although,' 'however,' 'on the other hand'.... Yes or no, Sheppard? Is there any reason we should be worried?"

"Depends," John said. He was hesitant because Hemmin had said it wasn't a certainty, and John didn't want Rodney pining over an uncertainty.

"On what?" Rodney gritted.

Too late now.

"On the caves."

TBC...


	5. Ch 4

A/N: thank you everyone who as left a review. I apologize for not being able to answer them, but my time on the .net is limited so i havne't been able to. A bit of McKay whump in this chapter, as well as Sheppard angst. Sheppard whump is soon to come in later chapters :D

Ch. 4

"Cover-of-darkness thing's a tad cliché, but I'll go with it," Rodney whispered. He was babbling, and it was starting to sound a little hysterical even to him. He'd lodged a litany of formal complaints over how insane this all was, did the self-convincing thing, and was now talking for the sake of talking as he inched along the canyon wall toward the cavern entrance.

The edaakas were being stealthier than he.

"Never thought something that big had stealth capabilities." He was fairly confident he was speaking at a level that couldn't be picked up. "Oh, please, please let them be good swimmers."

They had reached the caves around noon. John had gone to scout ahead, then returned with a plan to get them through that involved a few distractions and a lot of luck. Since it was the only plan John had, Rodney had had no choice but to agree to it, eventually.

When he was ten feet from the entrance, McKay snapped his jaw shut and clamped it for good measure. This cave had patrols, courtesy of Jyra, who had discovered the merits of tolls and taxing people for the use of the cave-pass. And like all caves, this one amplified acoustics.

A dark lump detached itself like a living piece of shadow and slipped into the solid darkness of the entrance. Rodney stopped and waited. Seconds later, the piece of shadow stepped back out into the silvery night, then slipped back in.

It was a go.

Rodney gave the edaaka lead rope a tug and jogged into the cave. Warm night air became cool, moist air smelling of rock, water, and a little sulfur. Rodney couldn't see squat except for a faint amber glow several yards ahead. So when his foot splashed and cold moisture soaked into his pant leg, he had to slap his hand over his mouth to keep from yelping. He gave the lead another tug and slowly waded deeper.

The edaakas showed no compunctions about splashing. Rodney stopped, listening in the steady silence for shouts or trumpets calling the patrols to arms. All he heard was the quiet lap of water against rock and his own harsh breathing. He moved on more slowly, forcing the edaakas to take smaller, less noisy steps. The water rose calf-deep, then to the knee, thigh, hip, and finally stopped a little above the waist just as the tunnel opened up into a sports arena-sized cavern of stalagmites forming pillars and stalactites like spears hovering over his head. The cavern was lit in a twilight glow from torches on the wall and lichens emitting an icy blue light. The glow danced off shimmering and glittering walls that seemed to writhe, like living beings of light and dark trying to kill each other.

The faint murmur of voices made Rodney cringe. The misshapen ceiling and walls hid most of the lesser caverns of the upper levels, along with whoever happened to be wandering around up there. Rodney kept as best he could to the middle of the underground lake, while at the same time steering toward the nature-made pillars and large boulders forming small islands. He glanced back at the edaakas wading like water buffalo and hardly making a sound. Some of the food and water packs were floating. Water ran off the oiled-down leather sacks as though it were seal-skin.

The Indaani prepared for everything, John had said, from sandstorms to floods, because Mother Nature did love surprises, no matter the climate.

Several feet ahead was one of many jetties stretching out over the water almost to the center. Rodney veered toward, it and pulled the edaakas in beneath it with Rodney huddled between them, holding them still as he waited.

----------------------

John moved at a curved-back crouch, keeping to the shadows of the uneven strip of land skirting the lake. He walked heel to toe on bare feet with his sandals tucked into his belt, pressing against his hip. He brushed his fingertips along the moist and uneven wall to keep his bearings. His other hand he kept near the handle of his machete. When he looked out to the water, his already dark-adjusted eyes picked up the only shadow-draped shapes that were moving from stalagmite to island, then finally to the nearest jetty, where they vanished.

Sheppard paused to scoop up a rock. He crept to the edge of the shore, gathering his cloak and robe around him, then rose enough to leap to the small island of rock three feet out from the shore. From that island he moved to another only two feet away, then a third that required a bigger leap.

Hemmin had said John was built for caves and climbing; his lanky limbs, flexibility, and especially his long fingers and toes. Hemmin had been most impressed by Sheppard's toes. "Stretched enough to grip," he had said, "like fingers." All the Indaani had admired his toes, which John had been both hesitantly amused and made uncomfortable by.

When John felt himself close enough to the other side of the shore, he straightened from his crouch and lobbed the rock the opposite way from where he and Rodney needed to go. The rock clattered, and Sheppard dropped to his knees, huddling in a ball with his head tucked to his chest. The cloak and the skull mask blended into the rock. John heard shouts, then saw men in fraying dark red garb materialize from behind a massive outcropping of rock. Two men, armed with rifles, gestured in the direction of the clatter.

Torch and lamplight made the shadows writhe. Everything was sharp, malformed contrast, even the men whose faces seemed more angled and cruel. John watched them through the holes of his skull mask, tense as a predator ready to run while also willing to attack. When the men vanished beyond sight, John unfolded from his huddle and slipped on ahead.

--------------------

Rodney heard the clatter of rock against rock, then the louder murmur of the men responding to it. Rodney counted to ten, then headed out from beneath the jetty. Any slower and he wouldn't be moving at all. The methodical pace, if one could call it a pace, made his nerves itch as though infested with microscopic insects. He wanted to run; his hammering heart and paranoid brain demanded it of him. Thank goodness for the dominance of logic and common sense. Rodney kept his methodical motions, promising himself long sessions with Heightmeyer to discuss how turtles kept their sanity.

Rodney could see the fluttering lights of the torch posts that marked the bridge stretching across the lake. He veered to the nearest and widest pillar of rock. He pulled the edaakas in close and hunkered between them. Not long after came the loud reverberating snap of another tossed rock. Rodney's eyebrows lifted in sincere admiration. Sheppard probably had a pound standing between him and total emaciation, and he still hurled projectiles like a quarter back.

Rodney listened for the voices, more this time, along with the thump of footfalls hollow on wooden boards. He slipped out from around the pillar and increased his speed from snail to turtle and headed for the bridge. His feet kept trying to lift off and his body to tip forward as though it would rather just swim. It would be easier, except Rodney had never been a good swimmer, and dog-paddling like a drowning rat tended to be noisy. But his progress was turning into one of those dreams where no matter how hard he pumped his legs, he just wouldn't move, and it was making him nauseated with a combination of irritation and panic.

He nearly continued right on under the bridge when the sudden change in lighting snapped him back to lucidity. His momentum carried him forward a little. Backpedaling caused him to slip and go under, and that was when panic really got its claws into him. He grabbed the lead with both hands and pulled upward until his head broke the surface. Rodney swiped the water from his eyes and blinked into the face of a rather annoyed black edaaka.

"Oh d-d-don't g-g-g-give me that l-l-look," Rodney sputtered and hissed through his chattering teeth.

The sharp report of another hurled rock echoed like a distant firecracker. Footfalls thumped and clattered over the bridge. Rodney counted, then started moving out from under the bridge.

The boards above him creaked. Rodney looked up and felt the blood drain from his face. A shape blocked the light pouring between the chinks, but there was enough to spark off the tip of a rifle pointed right at his face between the slats.

Also enough light for Rodney to see the smile behind the dark beard.

"I see you."

------------------------

John watched the men on the bridge as they took off to investigate the decoy. Three in all, but only two stepped off the bridge. One stayed behind. The man in red and black turned to move back to his post.

Sheppard's entire body prickled with electric panic. "Damn it!"

He island-hopped to the other side of the lake and raced across the slate smooth shore to the bridge. The man still on the bridge seemed to have taken an interest in his shoes. More specifically, something beneath his feet had the man bringing his rifle around and jamming the narrow barrel into the chink between two slats. John's bare feet slapped rock, then thumped the moldy wooden slats that pricked his feet with splinters. The man never looked up from his quarry, oblivious in the assumption that it was one of his compatriots rushing in to help.

"Step out with your hands raised," John heard. He also heard the click of a rifle being cocked. Itchy trigger fingers led to accidents, and everyone knew brigands and raiders preferred not take prisoners, even when ordered to. Too much of a hassle.

John pulled his blade from its sheath. The man pulled the rifle back enough to follow Rodney out from under the bridge. John was close enough to see the man's grin in a flash of dirty teeth, and the trigger finger beginning to tighten. Then he saw Rodney emerge from his hiding place.

Sheppard plowed into the man, going with the momentum of the man's fall to end up on top. The world slowed around him, the fall like a trip through water, allowing him to make the simultaneous move of covering the man's mouth and sliding the blade across his throat. At the jarring impact of solid ground, time resumed. John pushed himself off the motionless lump of body pouring out blood like a fountain from the split skin of the throat.

John didn't waste time contemplating the action. He was running on automatic as he knelt and shoved the body toward the edge. He kept a hold of the dead man's arms on that final push so the body slipped in soundlessly. Once in the water, John let go, and, stretching out his leg, gave the form a little nudge with his foot. The body drifted away into the darkness where it wouldn't be found until they were well beyond this place.

John felt no pride, no horror, and no real regret about what he'd done. There was an Indaani saying: Death was a wicked necessity during times of kill-or-be-killed. The Indaani loved life, but when it came to the defense of one's own life or the life of others, death was grudgingly tolerated. When that happened, it was best not to dwell on it.

Start to enjoy it, and you know something's wrong. John had added that bit himself. Thankfully, he found no joy in spilling blood. It was a wicked necessity, and he didn't dwell.

John turned his attention to Rodney, who was looking up at him. The man was so pale his face stood out stark against the darkness.

"You all right?" John asked.

Rodney gaped like a fish for a moment before snapping his quivering jaw shut and nodding.

John nodded back. "Good, keep going. We need to move fast before the others come back and start wondering where their buddy is."

Rodney nodded again. "Yeah, going, gotta get going." He turned. John reached out and clasped the man's wet shoulder, making him turn back.

"Rodney, it's all right. You're all right."

"Tell that to the hypothermia setting it," Rodney gasped. John released him to let him continue. When Rodney slipped beyond the light of the torches, John took off at a fast walk across the bridge to the other side of the shore.

The cave wasn't all that long, not like the Indaani cavern. They came to a point where the ceiling hung low, supported by rotting beams to prevent cave-ins. The shore became narrow, forcing John back into rock-hopping. He leaped and stretched from rock island to wide-based pillar to more rock islands until he reached the other side where the shore widened again. The gate to the pass lay just ahead.

By the jumble of shouts bouncing off the cave walls the guards behind him were already back and missing their friend.

John ran to the shore in time to see Rodney dragging his soaking body onto solid land, flopping and dripping like a fish. He fell to his knees half way out. John rushed forward, grabbing Rodney by wads of his shirt and hauling him away from the water with the edaakas in tow. Hauling became dragging when Rodney fell again and didn't get up.

"Rodney!"

John rolled him over, pulling him by the shoulders into a sitting position. The man was shivering, hard, his skin like ice, and his lips had a faint blue tint to them. "Hang on, Rodney," John said. He ran to where he'd dropped his cloak and coat, then returned to drape both over Rodney's shoulders. He slipped his arms beneath Rodney's armpits and lifted him to his feet, staggering under the other man's weight.

"Hold on, pal. We're almost out, I just need you to get on your edaaka. Come on, you can do it. Then we'll be outside where you can thaw, all right?"

The promise of warmth was probably the kicker that got Rodney reacting enough to help in the mounting process. Once on, John pulled the edaakas to the gate. He wasn't surprised the rest of the patrol hadn't arrive yet. He doubted they'd even figured out what had happened. But it didn't mean they wouldn't be coming.  
Sure enough, John heard a shout and stopped right as a bullet pinged off the floor. He hefted his own rifle and fired back at the single patrolman ducking back behind the stairway wall.

"Crap!" John snarled. If the rest weren't coming before, the gunfire was bringing them in now. John threw caution to the wind and continued on to the gate. He fired again when the guard's scruffy head made a reappearance. He heard more shouting, close by and far away: reinforcements.

John used the guard's momentary distraction to swing the gate open. Gunfire exploded, and John felt the heat of the bullet whiz past his ear. He turned, lifting the gun in one hand, and fired. The guard cried out and flailed backward.

"Finally!" John snapped. He mounted his edaaka and steered it behind Rodney's. He gave the animal a smack to the rump using the lead rope, and the edaaka took off into canyon the tunnel. John ducked another bullet from a newly arrived patrolman, then kicked his own edaaka into a run. The shouting tried to follow John, and bullets flashed off the walls. He silently thanked the incompetents who had crafted these rifles. The guards wouldn't even be able to hit the broad side of a barn unless they compensated for the crooked sights.

Searing pain tore across John's shoulder and he yelped. He'd forgotten about the occasional lucky shot. John's luck was in the speed of his edaaka that put greater and greater distance between him and the guards. The shouting drifted away, the gunfire became less, then the cave brightened from pitch black to gray to the blinding white of the morning sun. Both he and Rodney flew from the cold and wet tunnel into the dry and warming day. John whooped with the exhilaration of having made it, and being alive to be witness to a new day.

He'd kept his promise.

----------------------------

The mad dash did not stop until the canyon ended and the desert began. John took the lead and slowed the edaakas into a canter through a field of rocks until they came to a small oasis complete with a shallow pool of water and a smattering of plant life. It was an odd little oasis even to John. The trees didn't seem right. He didn't know why, but he expected the them to be taller, with a few fronds, not stubby with thousands of leaves.

John brought the fleeing to a halt and hopped from the saddle to go check on Rodney. McKay was slumped in his own saddle, still shivering with teeth chattering, but at least his lips were no longer blue. John pulled him from the edaaka and assured a gentle assent to the sandy ground. He removed the cloak and robe, then Rodney's shirt and pants.

"H-h-h-hey," Rodney protested weakly.

John wrapped the robe and cloak back around Rodney, dark side out to absorb the heat.

"Suck it up, McKay. It's either this or freezing your butt off."

"M-m-my butt is g-g-g-getting s-s-sand on it."

"Well, it's not like we're sticking around here," John said, rubbing Rodney's chest, then switching to his arms to get the circulation going. "We need to keep moving before the patrol plays catch-up."

John tucked Rodney's clothes into one of the loops holding the sacks. He and Rodney remounted and continued on at a canter, with Rodney cocooned in the robe.

It wasn't long before he started to complain about being hot. By then his clothes had dried, and they stopped for him to get dressed. Rodney tossed the robe and cloak back to John to stuff into a sack. He placed the cloak back around his shoulders, light-colored material out.

"Sure are a lot of oasis for a desert," Rodney commented around a mouthful of bread. They were eating on the move since John didn't know how pissed he'd made the cave patrol. "The canyons must act like a kind of wall against the climate, keeping the rain clouds from going any further. Mountains do that. Do you know if there's an ocean or something? Maybe on the other side of the town?"

John shrugged in reply. So McKay prattled on about the effect of mountain ranges on climates. The man liked to analyze everything, yet John thought it very natural. He found himself actually listening to the babble from time to time, especially when something Rodney said sounded familiar. John suspected there was a time he might have found all the talking obnoxious. He had yet to reach that point, even as the day wore on.

The sun descended toward the horizon, tossing striations of color across the sky, from burnished gold to citrus orange, warm pink to quiet violet, then on to the cooler blue-violet of the star-pricked night sky.

Rodney stopped talking for a whole minute.

"Oh, wow," he said finally. "I haven't seen a sunset like that since... before we left Atlantis. Of course, we don't have the added bonus of sunlight tossed across the ocean, but still..."

An image intruded into John's thoughts: a balcony, an ocean, and the sun sinking into it before a rippling orange path. Cool breezes scented with brine, and warm air from inside a lighted and comfortable place.

John winced when a cold spike of pain lanced through his skull as his brain tried to push for further details. The image fled like a spooked animal. Mental pictures like that – so vivid at the start then thin like dispersing mist afterwards – always left John feeling hollow, and aching with a longing that almost had him in tears. He hated the feeling more than he hated the teasing images. He wanted to ask Rodney about Atlantis, but couldn't because of what always came after nearly remembering.

Darkness covered the desert before the color had even faded from the sky. John and Rodney were moving along the peak of a dune that gave them a greater view of the darkening desert. It was like an ocean of shadows, and within the shadows was a cluster of lights not far off.

"What is that?" Rodney asked. "That can't be the town, can it?"

"Nope," John said, and turned his edaaka in the direction of the cluster, forcing Rodney to follow.

"Whoa, whoa, wait, what are you doing? You're not going to check it out, are you?"

"Yep."

"You don't even know what it is, or who."

John glanced over his shoulder and smiled, although he doubted Rodney could see it. "I do, actually."

-----------------

Rodney was quite surprised with himself. He was actually keeping his mouth shut. It was hard, especially the closer they came to the source of the lights, but he did it. It wouldn't have mattered how much he complained, Sheppard wouldn't have listened. Above that, though, was the natural albeit grudging trust he had for Sheppard. Sheppard was far from perfect – very, very far – but he knew what he was doing at least ninety-seven percent of the time. Although the same could not be said when it came to his sense of direction.

What was almost laughable, in a hysterical kind of way, was that now, on an alien planet, while suffering from amnesia, Sheppard knew exactly what he was doing. Had Rodney just met the man, it would have been easy to assume he'd been born and raised on this world.

The lights turned out to be a caravan that had stopped for the night at a good-sized oasis. The tents of colorful and heavily patterned cloth were set up, lamps hanging from string strung across the trees, and there was music playing.

Rodney knew about the wandering tribes from his fellow slaves, most of them being former members of said caravans. There was only one rule when it came to confronting one of the tribes: don't hurt them, and they won't hurt you. Other than that, they welcomed other travelers with open arms.

When John and Rodney approached, a whole gaggle of the tribe – men, women, and even a few children – came out to meet them. It was the oldest man who spoke with John. He was tall, and pencil thin, with almost-black hair pulled back in a ponytail, and a salt-and-pepper beard that extended past his thick, dark belt. He wore a shirt and pants of ocean blue, and a cloak of blue and green. When he spoke, it was in a deep but soft voice that was pleasant to listen to. He welcomed the travelers, said they were the first pair they had come across in days, and invited them to stay.

"We have the guest tent all ready, and food is being prepared," he said. "Will you join us?"

John smiled. "Yes, we will, thank you." He leaned down to extend his arm, and the leader took it, both clasping at the forearm.

Rodney had heard about tribe customs. Traveler helped traveler out. You did not accept an invitation to dinner and to spend the night because it was rude not to. You accepted because it was the smart thing to do. That had been a no-brainer for Rodney. Only idiots passed up free food and a warm bed for the night.

Offers were always made before introductions. When John and Rodney dismounted, they finally learned the leader was named Kyeisil, his wife, Atalla. His eldest son, Delsare, showed them where they could hitch their edaakas. After that, they were shown to the guest tent, where they were left to wash up. Another custom was that everyone, tribe folk and guests included, had to clean up head to toe before dinner.

The guest tent was only five feet from the shore of the lagoon. John brought water buckets into the tent and set them on the sandy ground. Rodney already had his own shirt off and grabbed a rag to begin scrubbing at the sand caked to his skin.

John was more reluctant. He went to the front of the tent and peeked outside, then to the back for another peek. He didn't look satisfied when he returned and crouched by the second bucket. If anything, he looked unsettled, as though uncomfortable in his own skin. He took his bucket and brought it over to the corner, away from the single brass lamp hanging from a hook in the middle of the tent.

Rodney paused in scrubbing to watch him. The shadows weren't strong enough to hide much. John removed the cloak, tossing it to one side, then slid his shirt off, tossing it to the other side. The bumps of his backbone pressed against the heavily scarred skin of his back. Short scars, long scars, some thread-thin and others that had once been deep and jagged. Given time, most might fade away into nothing more than a red or pale line that would only ever be noticed if one were to look close enough. Others would linger, vivid, even grotesque, hinting at a story John would never be able to tell.

John seemed to be keeping vigil as he washed, a very nervous vigil. Someone somewhere close by burst into laughter, and he flinched, glancing around wildly. Rodney suddenly realized John was shaking.

"Uh, Sheppard?" Rodney said.

John twisted his neck enough to peer over his shoulder at Rodney.

"You all right?" Rodney asked, and resumed scrubbing, especially under his armpits.

"Yeah," John said, and looked away.

Rodney didn't buy it. John was still shaking, kind of cringing, too, the way his shoulders were hunched. It was that helplessness all over again, the frailty. John looked brittle enough to shatter, and Rodney half expected him to yelp out in pain when he began scrubbing the cloth over his skinny body.

"You know," Rodney said, "you don't have to be ashamed of all the scars. If that's the problem, I mean. I have 'em, too." Not as thick as Sheppard's, but a few were still fresh enough to pull slightly whenever he moved. Nothing painful, just annoying.

"I know," John said. Apparently, the scars weren't the problem. Something was, something on the front of his body, which was why he huddled in the corner with his back to the world.

Rodney's instinct was to pry. He hated what he didn't know. He'd been labeled a control freak when it came to projects and solving problems, but it really had nothing to do with control. It was really more about obsession, which he had been accused of as well. An obsession to complete, and an obsession to know.  
Today, Rodney refused to give into obsession. He wasn't afraid of John, not in his current state. He was, however, afraid for him.

John was not helpless. That didn't mean he didn't need help. Rodney would never deny his social inability; quantum physics made a hell of a lot more sense than the every day human being. Still, he had the rather gut-wrenching feeling that if handled without care, those missing memories of torment and agony could easily shatter Sheppard to dust. Rodney didn't know how, or when, or what might possibly trigger such a thing. All he knew was that it was a definite possibility.

And this was Sheppard he was talking about. Stoic to the third degree, only one degree below Ronon.

Stoic, my ass.

Rodney turned away to let the man wash in relative privacy. When both finished, they dressed and headed out into the warm night among the camp-fires and travelers. Dinner was served from a collapsible table and eaten around whatever fire was available. Custom dictated that the guests eat with the caravan leader.

Life stories were swapped, Rodney doing most of the talking. Then those tribe folk with musical talents were prodded into playing. There was dancing, singing, then everyone gathered around to hear Kyeisil tell a story. An Indaani story, since neither Rodney nor John found any reason to hold back that John had been taken in by the Indaani.

Rodney was surprised to find himself enjoying it all. The food had been good – some kind of lizard meat that tasted like chicken and melted in the mouth, and Rodney was too hungry to care that it wasn't actually chicken - the music alternated between lively and haunting, the story had a twist ending that caught even Rodney off guard, and to top it all off, no one tried to engage him in pointless conversation.

Better yet, Rodney and John didn't have to stick around for the whole deal. When Rodney started feeling light-headed and John's head sagged and jolted, Kyeisil took notice and assured them they could depart for bed whenever they wished. Before going, Atalla gave them a small bowl of a bitter-smelling paste.

"It helps to heal wounds," she said, nodding toward John.

Rodney hadn't noticed the cut on John's shoulder that had started bleeding again. Neither had John, it seemed, when he glanced down at his arm and his eyes went wide. They hung around long enough to let Atalla clean the wound, then apply the poultice and a strip of cloth for a bandage.

John kept fingering the bandage as they headed back through the camp to the guest tent.

Rodney stared at him incredulously. "You honestly don't remember getting that?"

"I remember getting it, I just didn't remember having it."

Rodney rolled his eyes skyward. "You and your damn high pain tolerance. I'm surprised you haven't died of tetanus from all the rusty nails you didn't know you stepped on, or the scraped knees you didn't realize you got. It's a wonder you even know when you're shot."

"High tolerance doesn't mean I don't feel the pain," John said. "It just means I'm better at ignoring it... Possibly to the point of not feeling it," he added somewhat grudgingly.

Rodney just sighed.

Once back at the tent, he snuffed the candle, and the two took spots on either side of the soft floor, where they curled up in their cloaks. After the day Rodney had had, sleep slapped itself over him before he even had his head down.

He dreamed of home, of stepping through the gate, back into his room, taking a real shower, eating a hot meal. They were almost home. So close, Rodney could smell the brine... and the coffee.

He snapped awake to a hoarse cry of pain. Rodney bolted upright, whipping his head to the right to see John sitting up and clawing at his chest in panic.

"Sheppard?" Rodney said.

Saying John's name was like throwing a rock through glass. John jolted and searched frantically around before jolting again. He didn't even seem to notice Rodney, yet scrabbled backward away from him, moving until he had packed himself into the corner of the tent with knees drawn up and hands clutching his shirt. He was breathing fast, too fast, and was going to pass out if he didn't calm down.

Rodney was feeling a little panicked himself. Not enough not to act. He grabbed the flint used to light the lamp and stood flicking sparks onto the wick. When the tiny flame flared, Rodney dropped the flint and held his hands palm out toward Sheppard. He crept cautiously toward his friend. Sheppard's eyes rolled in his skull as he searched his surroundings, probably trying to recollect where he was or looking for the danger that wasn't there.

When Rodney was close enough, he knelt down in front of John. John's eyes finally stilled when they locked onto Rodney. The glassy haze cleared as recognition dawned. The fear, however, was slower to dissipate.

"It's all right, Sheppard." Rodney spoke barely above a whisper, which was the best he could manage when it came to soothing tones. "Whatever it was, whatever happened, it was just a dream. You're all right now..."

Rodney looked down when he saw movement. John's hands had released their death grip on his shirt, and he was rubbing a spot just below his chest.

Rodney dropped his hands, slumped, and scowled. "Let me guess – another injury you didn't feel." He moved fast, reaching out and snatching John's shirt up.

"Rodney!" John gasped.

Rodney's features immediately slacked, and his hastily prepared tirade was already forgotten.

John had a good amount of marks on the front of his body, but the brand in the flesh between his ribs stood out like blood in snow.

"Oh," Rodney said, and lowered John's shirt.

It was irrefutable proof; John had been an unfortunate guest of Jyra's dungeons. That was Jyra's symbol burned into John's skin. Only prisoners were marked. One couldn't mark a slave if they ever wanted to sell or trade him. A prisoner, however, was private property. If he escaped, whoever found him knew who to return him to, and would be rewarded for it.

Rodney's gut twisted. If anyone, even the people of this caravan, saw the mark they could easily get it in their head that returning John for the reward would be worth a little side trip. That mark on John's body put him in a perpetual state of danger.

It was no wonder he'd been so terrified about removing his shirt.

Rodney looked up into John's face, or tried to. John had turned away, eyes focused on the floor. Rodney's gut twisted tighter at the blatant display of shame. The fear he understood. The shame he couldn't fathom, and it both unsettled and angered him. Not at John, but at the ones who had marked him.

Angry or not, Rodney was at a loss for words. Assurances were needed, he just didn't know where to begin.

"Uh... um...," he stuttered. "I, uh... won't tell anyone. I mean, of course I won't tell anyone. I won't let anyone find out, either. Once we get home, Carson'll find a way to get rid of it. Lasers, maybe. Works for getting rid of tattoos..."

John looked at Rodney so suddenly, it made Rodney flinch. The intensity of Sheppard's gaze could have burned holes through the tent wall. "Will they send me back?"

Rodney gaped. "Uh.. Wha... Who?"

John radiated desperation and terror. "They... Them... The ones...Home. People at home. Will they send me back if they see it?"

Rodney felt like he was going to be sick. "What? No! They won't even know what it means. Even if they did, they wouldn't care. Jyra's just a freakin' wood tick compared to Atlantis. They'd probably blow him up just as soon as look at him. Like hell they'd send you back."

John seemed to struggle with Rodney's words, wanting to believe them yet unsure if he could. Rodney wondered if he was remembering something, some time when he'd felt abandoned, forgotten, not necessarily by Atlantis but associated with Atlantis since it was the only home Rodney had talked of. He was holding off mentioning Earth.

"John, look at me, listen to me."

John's eyes resumed contact with Rodney's.

"I know your memories are kind of all over the place, so you're just going to have to trust me."

John nodded. "I do."

"Good. Then trust me when I say that that mark will mean nothing to our people. If it upsets anyone, it'll be because someone had done that to you – hurt you – and not because they know what it means. You don't have anything to be afraid of, Sheppard. Once we get home, every thing's going to be great. Sunshine and kittens kind of thing. All hugs, comfort, soft beds, and the sweet nectar of life that is coffee. Got it?"

John furrowed his brow but nodded.

"Good. Now let's get some sleep."

Rodney led the way back to their respective sleeping spots, snuffing the candle out along the way.

"Too bad Teyla wasn't here," Rodney said as he climbed back under his bedding. "She would have gotten a kick out of these people."

"Teyla?" John said, sounding somewhat wistful.

"Yeah, Athosian leader. Greets you by touching foreheads..."

"Copper... hair?" John asked.

"Kicks your ass at stick-fighting."

"You like to call her Xena."

Rodney smiled. "But she's nicer."

"Yeah, way nicer," John mumbled. Rodney didn't let himself drift off until he heard John's breathing even out in sleep. Then he closed his eyes.

Neither one woke for the rest of the night.

TBC...


	6. Ch 5

Ch. 5

The desert wanderers were open-armed only at night, but compensation was in order if guests wished to travel with them during the day. Extra laboring hands to take down the tents and pack up wasn't enough. The guests would be sharing more of the tribe's food and water, requiring supplies to be replenished sooner than scheduled.

All John and Rodney had as payment were the two edaakas.

"We'll still be allowed to use them until we get to the town," John assured Rodney as he cinched the saddle straps. "And by then we won't need them. Besides, Hemmin said it's always a good idea not to have a lot on you in town. Something about it being every man for himself there."

Rodney tugged on the food and water packs tied to his saddle to make sure they were secure. "Towns, fortresses - you might as well wear a 'shoot me' sign on your back if you plan to settle down here, unless you join one of these caravans."

One of Kyeisil's middle sons walked past carrying a bundled tent cloth in his arms. He was McKay's height but wiry like Sheppard, with dark brown hair that went past his shoulders and a beard that was more like a five o'clock shadow.

"Towns allow for infiltration," he said. "They provide places to hide for thieves and raiders. And just because you see armed men in armor does not mean there is law there. Even those who claim to be protectors have their own agenda."

"Any advice on how to get through the town to the ring without getting decapitated along the way?" Rodney asked.

The young man smiled. "Run. Or, more accurately, do not stand still for too long. My father told me that as long as you can remain lost in the crowds, you will not be picked out by desperate thieves."

Rodney looked down at his sand-coated, sweat-stained clothes. "Looking like a vagabond isn't enough, I take it?"

"The thieves tend to get very desperate. Being as there are only two of you, they may very well take advantage of that. My father told me it's always best to travel in groups of four or more."

Rodney looked nervously over his saddle at Sheppard. Sheppard could only return the look.

"Move fast it is, then," he said, and gave Rodney a helpless shrug. Rodney rolled his eyes and muttered something about the futility of having high hopes.  
The caravan moved fast when it came to packing. The sun was still crawling out from under the horizon when the train of wagons, edaakas, and creatures like huge armadillos with aardvark heads started trundling over the sands. John and Rodney were situated somewhere close to the center of the line between two wagons hitched to the giant armadillos. There wasn't much talking between them, with Rodney intent on complaining. If it wasn't the sand kicked up by the wagon wheels, then it was the enormous armadillo droppings that Rodney's edaaka kept stepping in, releasing an odor that made him gag. He finally stopped complaining when the midday heat sapped the energy needed for it.

The caravan called a halt before dusk. They'd come upon a rather large oasis that the tribe wasn't going to pass up just for another hour of traveling. John and McKay helped set up the tent frames and cloths, and brought wood from the cache in the back of one of the wagons to start fires.

Dinner was more lizard meat stew with gray bread that tasted better than it looked. John and Rodney washed, then dined with Kyeisil and his family but skipped the music and the story telling with a sincere-enough excuse. Rodney was in a mood from blinking sand out of his eyes all day, and John more tired than usual. They went to their guest tent near the water and started a small fire of their own two feet from the shore. Then they sat, staring out over the pond to where horizon met sky, waiting for the festivities to die down enough not to startle them awake when they went to bed.

Getting easily spooked was something else they had in common beyond the scars. Being unable to discuss the origin of those scars was the third thing they had in common, even if their reasons weren't. John was certain had he been able to recall what had been done to him, he would have remained as clammed up as Rodney.

Recollection could be as painful as the experience.

"You're going to have to lead the way to the ring when we get there, McKay," John said when the silence became too much to handle. John didn't mind silence until his mind tried to wander to things he'd rather stay away from.

Rodney nodded. "It's not exactly hard to find. Since the Wraith can't pop in whenever they want, the town was able to establish itself around the gate. Of course, the major plus is that it's on a hill and all roads eventually lead to it. Trust me, you'd actually have to make an effort if you wanted to get lost. But like Kyeisil's kid said, it's the people you've got to watch out for."

John looked uncertainly over at Rodney. There was a question he'd been meaning to ask but couldn't be sure if the answer might trigger a memory he wasn't ready for. His memory hadn't been playing as much havoc with him lately, and he suspected it was because they were taking the whole recall thing slow enough for his mind to handle, one memory at a time.

His question involved only one memory. It was what that memory might involve that made him nervous. But it would probably be safer this way in the long run, rather than waiting for it to pop into his head and scare the hell out of him because he didn't know what it was about.

"McKay?"

Rodney tossed a dry twig plucked from a young bush it into the flames. "Yeah?"

"How did we end up... where we ended up? On this world, I mean?"

Rodney looked at John in an assessing, almost calculating way, probably debating the safety of answering. "The same way we end up anywhere," he began, sounding casual, as well as slightly annoyed, but proceeding cautiously by the way he paused to stare into the fire before speaking again. "Just your average, every day trading mission full of potential allies and people looking to make our lives miserable." Rodney plucked another twig from the tiny bush and flicked it. "I think it may have been my fault, actually. Well, not really my fault as I didn't actually do anything to make it my fault... except be a smart-ass in front of everyone, talking science gibberish a few locals understood to the extent that I was a smart man, and smart men are worth money. Our local guide and supposed future trading partner had warned us about the locals. None of us took him seriously... Well, maybe you and Ronon. I was too complacent a P-90 would spook the locals sufficiently enough to get them to back off. What I refused to accept until it was too late was that these people were smart when it came to getting what they wanted."

Rodney snorted, and his body jerked in silent, caustic laughter. "I didn't even know who they were. Bunch of armed guys rushed in the moment I stepped out from our guide's house and tried to ride off with me. You came charging in, grabbed me, then we were running, heading toward the gate. They fired..." Rodney's voice hitched. He went quiet for a moment, swallowing convulsively, before finding the nerve to continue. "You went down. Shot in the back. They grabbed me. The last thing I saw was you lying on the ground. A couple of the jerks surrounded you, then we moved out of sight. I was pretty sure they were either filling you full of more bullets or stealing your ammo and clothes. I was taken to the local dictator and presented as some kind of gift or payment or whatever. Got forced to work with what passed as a science team, and the rest is history."

Rodney lowered his face to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I had no idea they'd brought you, too. Or why, so don't even ask. Maybe to find out where we came from or where you got your weapons. Jyra may have looked like a pompous version of Robin Hood, but the guy was dumb as a fox and opportunistic. It makes sense he would have tried to pull information from you. Of course, I never considered that since I thought you were dead..."

A spot on John's shoulder blade began to itch. He reached back to scratch, and felt the puckered, misshapen skin through the thin threads of his shirt. No memories were invoked except for sensations: sharp pressure on his shoulder blade and pain.

"No one came to find you." John stated it as a fact since it was, or Rodney wouldn't be there.

Rodney shrugged. "Maybe. Probably. Highly likely since your whole 'leave no man behind' motto is contagious. As much as I would like to think otherwise just to have someone or something to be pissed at, I can't. I've been hanging around you people too long to keep thinking people don't give a damn. Elizabeth would have sent a search party. If not, then Ronon would have gone off to do it alone and Teyla would have come with him because she has a heart of gold and all that touchy-feely crap. Someone would have looked for us. Obviously," Rodney's shoulders slumped, "they didn't find us. Probably couldn't."

"But they would have tried?"

"Yeah, they definitely would have tried."

"Maybe they still are."

Rodney flicked another, larger twig. The fire flared, spitting up a small cloud of sparks like red and yellow fireflies. "Maybe they've been captured."  
"That's not a very positive way to think."

Rodney huffed. "Since you're unable to remember, let me remind you that I'm not normally a positive person. Besides, I've earned the right for a little negativity now and then."

John creased his brow. "But it's not exactly fair to Ronon and Teyla..."

Rodney breathed out a put-upon sigh and rolled his eyes heaven ward. "Sheppard, I was being sarcastic. It's not like I was hoping they were captured or wishing they were. I like to complain, or haven't you noticed?"

John grinned. "I've noticed. I'd forgotten how easy it is to get a rise out of you."

Rodney snapped his head around to glare at John. He had his mouth open for a retort, and a finger raised in emphasis, when his eyes went round and his jaw slowly closed.

"Please tell me that's not the first thing you remembered when you saw me."

John narrowed his eyes conspiratorially. "I don't remember."

Rodney narrowed his own eyes in a scowl. "Ha-ha, so clever. Shut up, Colonel."

"Make me."

They both fell silent long enough for John to start to wonder if he'd pushed it. He looked over at McKay who had gone back to staring and flicking twigs into the fire.

"You want to know what's ironic?" Rodney said.

"What?"

The corners of McKay's mouth twitched a few times before finally curling into a lop-sided smile. "I've missed this."  
"What, me pissing you off and you getting pissed?"

"Exactly."

John shook his head. "You're a weird man, McKay."

"Pot and kettle, Colonel, pot and kettle."

"Huh?"

McKay chuckled quietly. "Never mind."

---------------------------

The next day, Rodney was less vocal in his complaints and more vocal about what he was going to do when he got home. Shower, sleep for days, drown himself in coffee, and bribe the Atlantis cooks into whipping up everything and anything that could be made with chocolate. John found it more amusing than his constant complaints. A better distraction from the dull throbbing in his head and the sloshing in his stomach. John knew he should have eaten more, but hadn't had the appetite for more than a few bites of mash.

The desert morphed from sand to rock and small cliffs. The town came into view before midday when the caravan crested a small hill and began pouring down the other side. The town almost filled the valley except for a quarter-mile strip between the surrounding hills and structures. In the center of the city, as McKay had said, was a small hill topped by five pillars surrounding the ring, a thin loop in the distance.

The caravan continued on until they reached the bottom of the hill, but didn't move any closer to the city. A group of ten men armed with rifles and blades gathered mounted on edaakas to ride to in for trade and supplies. John and Rodney went with them, and on the outskirts of the city where the buildings began, they delivered their payment.

John took only a water flask and a sack of food from his saddle. Rodney copied him, then they passed the reins off to the tribesmen.

"Take care of them," John said. He already knew they would by the way the caravan treated their own animals. They left the men and headed into the city through a narrow alleyway between two squat, square buildings of white sand brick.

"I'm actually going to kind of miss that animal," Rodney said.

John smiled and nudged Rodney in the arm with his elbow. "Did you name it?"

Rodney shrugged. "I was going to call it Sam, but I think it was a male and that wouldn't have been right."

"Isn't Sam a boy's name?"

"Not all the time."

John scrunched his eyebrows in careful thought. There was something familiar about the name. It made him think of a woman, a blond woman, really smart, McKay kind of smart...

"Hey, isn't Sam - ?"

"What did you name yours?" Rodney interjected.

John blinked at the sudden interruption and scratched the side of his head. "Uh... Black Hawk."

Rodney's mouth set in a straight line. "Of course."

"Do I like hawks or something?"

"A Black Hawk is a machine, Colonel, a flying machine called a helicopter."

An image of a flying machine with whirling blades flitted through John's mind. "Oh. I used to fly those, right?"

"You flew whatever could be flown, or so you once said. Mostly helicopters, though."

John nodded. "I thought so. It explains why I was never afraid of heights."

They emerged from the cool alleyway into the dust-choked streets flowing with bodies. It was hard to breathe in the crowds, between the increase of heat from so many bodies and the stench of animal fecal matter and unwashed skin. The buildings were all blocks of various size made from sand-brick and wood.

John's stomach was trying to mimic ocean waves during a storm. He wiped sweat from his face with the hem of his cloak that felt heavy on his back, then took a quick swig of warm water from the leather flask.

"Hey, you all right?" Rodney asked.

"Yeah," John gasped, lowering the flask. "Probably need to drink more."

"Probably need to sit down and remove some layers. You look like crap, and I mean more so than usual." Rodney glanced around as they moved. They turned left onto a new street leading to a small open square with a well. Rodney snagged John's arm and hurried him toward it. It was a large well, one with four buckets and benches for people to sit. Rodney shoved John down onto a bench, then dropped one of the buckets into the well. John winced at the ache burning in his limbs just from trying to remove the cloak.

It didn't help. John jumped when Rodney thumped a full bucket of water down next to him.

"Could be the onset of heatstroke," Rodney said. He ripped a strip from the ragged end of the cloak and dipped it into the bucket. "You need to cool down and drink more water." He pushed the soaked rag into John's hand, then pointed at his face. "Start mopping."

John rubbed the sopping, dripping cloth against his face and down his neck. He had to admit the cold water helped, numbing the throbbing in his skull.  
"Keep mopping and drinking," Rodney commanded. "I'm going to ask about the quickest route to the gate. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner I can dump you into Carson's capable hands."

"Sure that's a good idea?"

Rodney shrugged. "No, but at this point I don't care. It's not like I'm moving out of sight. Just wait here. Unless you hear me start shrieking, then come running."  
Rodney began wandering the small square looking for someone to ask. John dipped the rag into the bucket, then squeezed it across the top of his head and down his neck. Since waking up in the company of the Indaani, Sheppard did not recall ever feeling this hot. His skin seemed like it was trying to melt off his bones, and his brain was about to boil in his skull. All together, it increased the aggravation of his gut until he was swallowing back his breakfast. John planted his elbow on his knee to rest his forehead in his hands as he squeezed more water on his head and neck. All he wanted to do was curl up and sleep in the shade, just for an hour.  
"It's a simple question, so why the hell would I pay you for it!"

John snapped his head up to see Rodney arguing with wild gesticulations. The man he was snapping at was leaning casually against the wall of a two-story building. He was a foot taller than Rodney, broadly built, and grinning at Rodney in a way John didn't like.

The man raised his hands in mock helplessness. "Sorry, my friend. Times are not easy, and I must find some way to buy food."

The man looked a little too healthy to be a beggar.

Movement pulled John's attention to the right, and another man moving toward the confrontation as though drawn by an unseen string. John didn't hear the exchange. He did see the way the newcomer was studying Rodney as though he were amusing.

"No, there's no problem!" Rodney snapped. "I just want some damn directions!"

John tossed the rag to the side in order to push himself to his feet. He swayed, just for a heartbeat, as the world spun. Then he shook his head clear and walked quickly toward his friend.

The first man grabbed Rodney by the arm. "I'm offering you a service, little man," he said. "A guide to the ring for only a coin."

Rodney tried to jerk his arm free. "I don't need a guide I just. Need. Directions! Why is that so hard to understand? What is it about that simple request that can't get past that thick skull of yours?"

The man shoved Rodney back, and John arrived in time to catch him and keep him from falling. He released Rodney only when he'd managed to right himself, then moved to stand beside him.

"What's going on here?" he asked, watching both men warily.

The first man's gaze wouldn't leave Rodney. "Your friend is being very stubborn. He wishes to find the ring and will not enlist our help to do so. It can be very tricky to find."

Rodney scowled and tilted his head to one side. "Yes, it's such a pain in the ass to locate, which is why I've only found my way there five times instead of ten. Look, forget I asked anything. We'll just take the long way. Come on, Sheppard."

He turned to go, and Sheppard followed backing up. He didn't want these men out of his sight.

For good reason, when the first advanced on Rodney, grabbing him by the shoulder and spinning him around.

"An unwise move, friend. You should have taken our offer." The man cocked his fist, and before Sheppard could move to intercede, slammed it into Rodney's face.

"Hey!" John barked, and charged the man, shoving him away from Rodney, who was now sprawled on the ground. "What the hell's your problem?!"

The man smiled coldly and pointed at McKay. "He insulted me."

"And he's sorry now, so back off."

The man stepped closer to John, invading his personal space. "Sorry isn't enough."

John gaped. "Oh, you've gotta be kidding me. We have no money and my friend wouldn't have insulted you if you'd just gotten that through your damn head!"  
The man shoved John back. "No one comes here without something to trade."

John shoved back. "Well, surprise, surprise, we did. Sorry to disappoint. Why don't you go find someone with something to trade, and leave us alone."

John was grabbed by the shoulder of his shirt. "Why don't you hand over what ever it is you're hiding, and _then_ will leave you alone."

He wanted to laugh, and nearly did. "You're freakin' unbelievable. Do I look like I'm hiding anything? My crap's over on the bench by the well. Go ahead and poke through it - you won't find squat."

The second guy was doing just that, and probably had been for a while. He looked up after tossing the cloak on the ground and gave the first man a helpless shrug."

The man's eyes smoldered with anger and something John could have sworn was desperation. It explained a lot, and John's money was on the desperation being a debt of some kind, maybe gambling, or maybe he owed someone. Either way, when he turned that gaze on John, John knew he was the one the man was going to take his bad luck out on.

He shook Sheppard. "You have something," he sneered, and began patting John down. John had had enough and shoved the man back. But the man still had a grip on his shirt and pulled him in. The two struggled, John trying to get away and the man trying to search him. A crowd had begun to form, a mix of civilians and men in breastplates and helmets pointing at the fray, making remarks, laughing, and not doing squat to stop it.

Rodney jumped in, trying to pull the man away from John, while the man's friend pulled at Rodney. The first man elbowed Rodney in the face, driving to the ground. John balled his fist and slammed it into the first guy's face. His head whipped to the side, but John's shirt stayed clenched in his fist. John jerked, twisting and bucking backward. The man groped blindly for John's other shoulder, so John lifted his foot and slammed it into the man's stomach.

The rebound shoved John back enough for the thin shirt to split, sliding all the way to his elbow. The man finally let go, only to plow into John, driving him to the ground. The two grappled' trying to go for the other's neck.

John finally managed a decisive knee to the groin that toppled his opponent. He scrabbled backwards away from his assailant toward the well.

A hand grabbed the collar of his shirt and hauled him to his feet. He wasn't even upright when the interloper tossed him to the ground and planted a boot on his shoulder.

John looked up at his new attacker. The man wore the red clothes and tarnished armor of a guard. He looked down at John with pure indifference, then slight curiosity with head tilted to one side.

"What do we have here?" he asked. He reached down and parted the halves of Sheppard's shirt.

John's heart recoiled and icy terror shot through his veins.

"Never thought I'd live to see that mark." The soldier reached down again to grab John by the arm and yank him to his feet. The soldier lifted his hand in the air, capturing the attention of everyone gathered. "It seems we have a criminal among us!" he called. He yanked hard on the back of John's mutilated shirt until the sleeves were bunched at his wrist and the majority of his upper body was exposed: scars, brand, and all.

"He has been marked!" the soldier crowed. "He is a traitor!"

The crowd erupted into catcalls and hissing, with a few drawing weapons, from small knives to rifles. John saw hatred and disgust in most of the gazes, and terror in others. His already hammering heart increased in rapidity. He cringed, pulling back, wishing he could shrink out of existence. He began trembling, and looked over his shoulder at McKay still on the ground.

John begged for help without words.

-----------------------

There was nothing Rodney could do. He lurched painfully to his feet, tried shouting above the noise of the crowd that they were wrong. That terror he'd hoped to never see again in John was back. His friend's gaze screamed for help, and there wasn't a damn thing Rodney could think of that would help him.

The soldier holding John shoved him hard to the ground to give him a good kick to the solar plexus. John gasped and curled into himself against the pain.  
"No!" Rodney screamed. He advanced, only to be pulled back by the crowd creeping closer and closer toward Sheppard.

Another soldier came in from behind and booted Sheppard in the spine.

"No, leave him alone!" Rodney jerked forward, and hands held him back as countless mouths laughed in his ears.

John had rolled onto his back, and a third guard rammed the butt of his rifle into Sheppard's spread ribs. Rodney could hear the crack of shattered bones above the cacophony of the crowd. John's scream ripped through Rodney's ears. The soldiers circled John like jackals around a carcass. They then backed off enough for someone to lob a stone, hitting John in the chest. John curled into the tightest ball he could with his arms shielding his head as more stones sailed from out of the crowd to hit him on his exposed back, arms, side, and legs, drawing blood from his shaking body.

Rodney leaped and jerked, screaming at the top of his lungs. "NO! Stop it! Leave him alone! Leave him alone, you sons of bitches!"

He broke free. The hands tried to grab for him, but Rodney was already beyond their reach. He shoved past the guard, dropping to his knees by his friend and covering him. The projectiles pelted Rodney's body instead. He gritted his teeth, grunting with each sharp impact.

"It's okay, Sheppard," he gasped, then yelped when a larger projectile got him between the shoulder blades. "It's going to be okay." Rodney didn't really believe the words himself, he just felt something needed to be said. "I won't let them take you back." That he believed, since it was a promise. He wasn't sure exactly how he'd pull it off, but if he had to incite the soldiers into shooting both of them just so John wouldn't have to go back, he would.

He knew John would have done the same for him.

Rodney screamed when another projectile glanced off his ribs. Hands were all over him again trying to pull him away from John. Rodney held onto his friend with everything he had.

The rapid, resounding thunder of a discharged weapon that wasn't a rifle seemed to freeze the world as though someone had hit the pause button.  
"It'd be smart of you to back off... now."

Rodney lifted his head. He knew that snarl. Knew it and actually loved it for once. The hands drifted away, then the surrounding bodies of the soldiers, to reveal a towering figure all muscle and threat.

Except to Rodney, who he smiled down at as he lifted his weapon to rest against his shoulder.

"McKay," Ronon greeted him.

Rodney just stared, numb, speechless, and fighting the urge to leap up and throw his arms around the Satedan. He shook his head slowly in disbelief. Relief surged through him, drowning him in every conceivable emotion until he didn't know what he felt.

So he went with what usually worked best for him, and found his response.

"What the hell took you so long!"

Ronon graced Rodney with his usual answer: a shrug. "Sorry."

"Sorry?" Rodney growled. "Sorry!" He remained fixed in his position of bodily shielding Sheppard. "Three months, Ronon! Three freakin' months of pure hell! I honestly don't think sorry is going to cut it."

"Too bad, because it's all you get. Now, get up, we need to get out of here before someone decides to do something stupid."

A guard took the initiative to advance, and was blasted by Ronon's stunner for his troubles.

"Like that," Ronon added.

Rodney nodded twitchily and eased off the lump of flesh and bone he'd been protecting. Ronon crouched across from him.

"That Sheppard?"

"Yeah, but he's hurt, probably bad, I don't know."

"Can he move?"

Rodney looked down at John, then gently shook his shoulder. "Sheppard? You with me? You need to get up. The cavalry's here."

John's overheated skin shivered under Rodney's hand. Rodney leaned in to try to establish eye contact, except most of John's face was hidden behind his arms and his eyes were squeezed shut.

"Sheppard. It's all right, they've stopped. We can go now."

John audibly swallowed and nodded, but his eyes remained shut even as he began moving his arms off his head. Rodney finally realized the expression to be a grimace of pain, not fear. Every movement as John unfolded himself made his breath catch or hiss over some newly discovered ache.

Sheppard finally opened his eyes when he managed to prop himself up on his elbows. His gaze was unfocused, his eyes glassy, and the skin around them was shaded dark like fading bruises. His face was pale, and from the way his body oozed heat like a radiator, Rodney knew it was from more than just the pain.

"It's all right now," Rodney assured him. He looked up at Ronon helplessly. "I think he's sick, too. Help me get him up."

Rodney took one arm and Ronon the other. The Satedan handled John like he was made of paper, making Rodney's help pointless. He released John, letting Ronon hold him up. John plucked at his shirt, trying to pull it over his exposed back and shoulders. Rodney helped him, feeling guiltily glad to have the cuts and darkening bruises covered.

"Are we ready?" Teyla called. She was currently preoccupied with keeping her sights and weapons trained on the surrounding hostiles.

"Let's go," Ronon said. He pointed his weapon at the crowd, and it parted like the Red Sea.

"You cannot take him!" someone shouted. Rodney glanced back to see another soldier – a more sensible one – step forward while also hanging back. "That man is an escaped prisoner. He must not leave!"

Yet no one made a move to stop them. That was the setback to the kind of men Jyra employed : they were all about the sanctity of their own hides. Rodney rather appreciated it this time around. Although it would not last long if reinforcements were brought in.

Rodney took John from Ronon to allow the bigger man the freedom of both hands for protection purposes. John had also been looking a little disconcerted at being manhandled by someone he only vaguely remembered. The colonel's hand was clutching his shirt together over the mark, and he was eyeing Ronon both warily and curiously. Either the Satedan didn't notice or didn't care. Rodney was certain it was the latter.

They were moving slower than a run to keep John from stumbling. Rodney glanced over his shoulder at the tangle of bodies moving in haphazard directions. No one appeared to be following them. Didn't mean they weren't, though.

"So where the hell have you guys been all this time?" Rodney asked since talking usually minimized his panic.

"Looking for you two," Ronon replied.

Teyla quickened her pace until she was moving along side Rodney while keeping her weapon up against her shoulder. "We have not stopped searching since your disappearance," she explained. "Only returning to Atlantis for supplies and to update Dr. Weir on our progress. We had searched most of the nearby towns hoping to learn what we could of your where-abouts and trying to find those who would take us through the canyons to the cities on the other side."  
"Didn't matter what we offered," Ronon said. "No one would take us."

They avoided the main thoroughfare, taking only side streets and shadowed alley ways.

"We were trying to learn of any caravans planning to travel through the canyons when we heard you shouting Colonel Sheppard's name."  
Rodney smiled tightly. "Well, your timing is so beautiful, it should be art."

When they came to the wide stairway leading toward the gate, its sudden appearance startled Rodney. Ronon took John's other arm for extra support as they hustled up the crowded steps, and he chanced another glance back. He saw people pushing through the crowds in the frantic, hurried way of those trying to keep up. Sunlight flashed off the armor and rifle-tips of several of those people.

Rodney looked back, gulping and tightening his hold on Sheppard's arm. They would take his friend over his dead body, which was what he was currently afraid of.

They reached the top in time to see the gate shut down after whoever had just gone through. Another group stepped out of the small line formed at the DHD, ready to dial. Teyla raised her weapon and let rip a few rounds into the air. People screamed and ducked. Ronon barked for the man about to dial to back off, then dialed himself. The gate burst to life in an explosion of foaming liquid that coalesced into the shimmering event horizon. Teyla whipped out her GDO from within the folds of her cream-colored cloak.

John perked up, twitching a rather vacant smile that made Rodney wonder if one of the projectiles had made contact with his head.

"Garage Door Opener," John mumbled.

"Anyone who tries to follow us," Ronon bellowed, "forfeits his life on the other side!" The Satedan prodded both Rodney and John toward the gate. Rodney felt the muscles of John's arm go rigid.

"We're going home, John," Rodney assured. "It'll be all right, trust me."

A bullet pinged off the top of the gate. Ronon gave the two men a massive shove, thrusting them into the event careened through the cosmos on the rollercoaster ride that was stargate travel, and emerged stumbling out on the other side.

Cool air, clean smells, and Ancient architecture assaulted Rodney's senses. He sucked in a sharp breath and smiled like a kid stepping for the first time into an amusement park.

"We're home," he breathed. The weapons trained on them were lifted away. Rodney looked to the stairs to see Dr. Weir and several others heading down the steps toward them. He glanced back as Teyla and Ronon emerged from the gate unharmed.

Rodney shook John's arm. "We're home, Sheppard. Home!"

Sheppard didn't say anything, and that's when Rodney realized he was shaking, hard. He looked up into the colonel's ashen face and wide eyes. He had his mouth open, gulping in air. His back was hunched in a cringe, and his fist was trying to press deeper into his chest over the mark.

"Sheppard?" Rodney shook John's arm again. "Hey, Sheppard, it's all right..."

John started stepping backward. His eyes were roaming wildly all over the place, taking in the structure and the faces that were raising memories like a stampede. Good with bad, too much and too soon, Rodney knew. In their joy, then their worry, everyone gathered around, moving in like shrinking walls. Ronon, Teyla, Dr. Weir, Dr. Beckett, scientists and marines alike. John's breathing increased to a rate Rodney was certain would make the man pass out.

"Sheppard, it's okay!" Rodney tried to assure him, as did everyone else around them until Rodney's voice was drowned out. John slowly backed away, jerking his arm free of Rodney's grasp, using both hands to clasp his shirt closed. Hands reached out to him with the intent of calming him through physical contact, but he didn't know that.

Teyla's was the first to brush his shoulder. John jumped and jerked away so fast, his weakening body couldn't handle it and he fell. He scrabbled backward away from the hands and strange but familiar faces until the gate blocked his escape. John shrank against it, bringing his knees up and his elbows in to make himself as small as possible.

It wasn't "Scanners," but it was still bad. Rodney rushed forward and dropped to his knees in front of Sheppard, taking either side of the man's colorless face in his hands. He tossed a snarl over his shoulder, "Everyone, just back off," adding, more gently, "please. Just... wait. Just wait, all right?" He looked back at Sheppard and made sure his was the only face John saw. "Look at me, Colonel. Just me and nothing else."

John was shaking like a leaf during a hurricane. He pried one hand from his shirt with effort to press it to his forehead. He wasn't looking at Rodney. He wasn't looking at anything except his own knees. His face twisted in pain with eyes squeezed shut.

"John?" Rodney's question came out sounding like a plea.

"M-my head... It hurts, McKay." John moaned then sagged with a shudder. "I don't feel so hot..." He cut himself off when he lurched to the side, yanking away from Rodney's hands to heave. The muscles of his back and flanks corded and contracted. Rodney placed an uncertain hand on the bony back, feeling Sheppard's knotted tension beneath the skin. When John finished, he slumped against the gate in heavy exhaustion. But he was still shaking.

Rodney clasped John's shoulder. "It's – it's all right. Sheppard, we're home. S-so it's all good. These people back here," he jerked his thumb at everyone waiting on pins and needles behind him, "they just want to help. Um... that okay? If they help?"

John looked up, finally giving into eye-contact, and nodded wearily.

McKay nodded back, his body feeling as though it were melting in relief. "Yeah, good, great. All right then. I'm just going to help you to stand, and no one is going to do any touching or closing in unnecessarily. We'll go to the infirmary, where someone who knows how can make you feel better."

Rodney took John's arm and draped it across his shoulders. Sheppard being abnormally more slender didn't seem to make him any less heavy. Rodney grunted and gritted his teeth helping John get to his feet, then supported him until he managed to find his own footing. One withering look from Rodney, and the crowd parted as though Ronon had his gun aimed at them.

Rodney escorted Sheppard to the infirmary, complaining all the way about the bad back he'd be sporting in the morning.

TBC...


	7. Epilogue

Epilogue

Beckett, Carson, M.D. He was from a place called Scotland. Except, Scotland wasn't here, it was somewhere else, Sheppard just wasn't sure where that somewhere else was yet.

His brain no longer felt like it was being skewered with firebrands, but it still hurt. A pressurized ache pulsed to the beat of his heart and attempted to incite another acid riot in his stomach. The room's stifling heat that the doctor insisted didn't exist, only exacerbated the way he was feeling. It sucked the energy right out of him, like being out in the sun too long without water or shade. All John wanted to do was curl up on his soft bed and sleep.

The doctor wouldn't let him, however, not yet. He stood on one side of the bed next to a short woman with honey-blond hair tied in a ponytail. Rodney stood on the other side, pointedly ignoring another woman with dark brown hair. Both women were dressed in the loose clothes John's brain kept calling scrubs.

It took gentle coaxing from Carson and irate prodding from Rodney to get John to release his hold on his shirt. It wasn't that he didn't trust Rodney's promise that these people didn't give a damn about the mark. It had just become an ingrained habit to make sure it stayed hidden.

When John finally relented, Carson peeled the two halves apart and didn't react to what he saw except to become more sympathetic. John let him maneuver the shirt's remains from his body. The doctor looked over John's front, then his back. He stuck a listening device into his ears and placed the round end to John's chest, followed by both sides of his back.

A stethoscope; the device was called a stethoscope. Recollection popped in easier with each item Beckett used. A pressure cuff that pinched his arm. A pen light that stabbed like a blade into both eyes. A thermometer that went in his ear. A needle hooked to a tube connected to a clear bag full of liquid was stuck into his hand.

"I.V.," John mumbled.

Beckett smiled as he taped the needle into place. "Aye, an I.V. Rodney, did ya say if his amnesia was retrograde?"

Rodney had finally been coaxed onto another bed for Carson to check him. "No, Carson, I did not," he snapped. His hands were clasped on his lap and his legs swung impatiently back and forth. "I said he had some kind of amnesia. Need I remind you who's the one who tosses the chicken bones around here? Although, I did suspect his memory loss may have had something to do with, well, what happened to him."

Carson nodded. He was taking blood out of Sheppard now, collecting it in a little tube. "Aye, that could be." He handed the tube off to the woman John realized was called a nurse. Carson gave some order, then while he waited for it to be filled, checked John over by hand, pressing along his spine, then each individual rib. He was gentle around the bruises, but John still yelped at a pinch of pain.

Carson winced. "Sorry, lad. Looks like there might be a few cracks in the ribcage."

"Is he going to be all right?" Rodney asked with a mix of impatience and worry.

"Well," Carson said, "he's got a temperature of 100.7, and my money's on infection as the cause. That and further infection from these cuts are my main concern. He's dehydrated, no surprises there. You don't stay hydrated out in the sun with a fever. You say he hasn't been starving or anything, so I can't say that he's malnourished. He is a bit too underweight for comfort, though. If ya hadn't have told me otherwise, I would have jumped to the conclusion that he hasn't eaten for days."

"But he has," Rodney assured him, then turned indignant. "I don't see you fretting over my weight loss."

"That's because you haven't lost an amount for me to fret over, Rodney. Colonel Sheppard isn't the kind of man who needs to be losing weight. He had nothing to lose except muscle."

John rubbed his arm in growing discomfort at being talked about while he was still present.

The nurse returned with the requested items, including a bowl of soapy water and a sponge. John didn't think anything about it until the curtain was pulled closed, blocking Rodney from sight.

John tensed. "Wh-what... what are you...?"

Carson placed his hand lightly on John's shoulder and smiled. "It's all right lad. We're just going to clean you up a bit."

"It's cool, Sheppard," Rodney called. "Like hell am I going to be blinded by your pasty white ass."

John huffed a nervous laugh. He tried to come up with a witty retort, only to be distracted by the touch of something soft, warm, and wet on his back. He flinched, pulling away.

Beckett graced him with another gentle smile. "Clean-up, son. We're just cleaning you up. It's all right, it won't hurt. And just the upper body. Right now, I can't tell bruises from smudges, no offense."

John didn't relax until half-way through the cleaning. At one point, the nurse had to go for another bowl of water when the first turned to mud. After the major cleaning came the minor cleaning of the cuts on his back with swabs and saline solution. Antiseptic cream was smeared on and the cuts bandaged. One needed sutures.

After the cleaning came a short trip through the complicated box with openings on either end. The machine was familiar, just not enough for John to trust it. He didn't lie down until Beckett removed the I.V. and gave him a non-medical-jargon overview of the machine's purpose. The thing sounded harmless, but it was large outside while small and bright on the inside. John's heart felt like it was trying to beat its way through his ribs, making it hard to breathe. So he held his breath as the bed eased him into the opening. Beckett commanded him to hold still, and John tensed his muscles until the shivering stopped.

"At this rate," Rodney shouted from across the infirmary, "I'm going to die of old age and Sheppard of a heart attack. Seriously, Carson, you're scaring the hell out of him."

John emerged at the other end unharmed, heart rate descending back to a tolerable speed. It hadn't been so bad, after all, except for the lights and that obnoxious humming. And yet he still couldn't get off the cold, solid bed fast enough, backing away from the thing until he ran into Beckett, who was looking over the results.  
"Whoa! Easy there, son," Carson said, placing his hands on John's shoulders to steady him. "Come on, let's get you back into bed."

Carson was kind in the way he pushed Sheppard along. They gave him a white scrub shirt and pants, letting him change in privacy. The I.V. was pricked back into his hand and taped into place. Then, finally, what John had been waiting for, the covers were pulled up to his waist and the go-ahead given for him to rest.  
Carson moved on to Rodney's bed to go through the same process he had with John. John winced rolling onto his side and pulling the blankets up to his shoulder He fought back exhaustion just enough so he could keep his eyes open and watch.

He trusted Rodney.

He didn't trust that this place hadn't changed since they were gone. New people, perhaps, could be present who did not know them. New leadership. New rules they had yet to become aware of. That neither sounded nor felt right, John just couldn't be sure, and that scared him.

The only surety he had was that Rodney knew what he was doing, and what wasn't known, he'd soon find out. This was Rodney's domain of expertise.  
_The ball is in his court. Yeah, something like that._ It was up to Rodney to keep them safe this time, should there be anything to be kept safe from.

"Oh, will you just go to sleep already!" Rodney barked. He was trying to remove his shirt with one hand while smacking the nurse's hand away. "I'm not going anywhere and neither are you, so just relax and enjoy sleeping on something other than rock for once. We're safe, Sheppard. If I have to tattoo that on your forehead just to make you realize it, then so help me I will. We're safe. Safe, safe, safe." Then he added with emphasis, "Safe."

John sighed heavily. He trusted Rodney, and even if he hadn't, the exhaustion was too much to hold back. "'Kay," he mumbled. He gave his eyes permission to slide shut, and burrowed deeper into the softness under him, the warmth over him, and Rodney's petulant retorts all around him.

-------------------------

Carson chuckled lightly. "You've established quite the influence over our poor colonel, Rodney. And you've done a bloody right job looking after him." He warmed the cup of the stethoscope in his hand before placing it to Rodney's chest.

No sarcastic retort backlashed against Carson's comment. Rodney was unnaturally silent. Carson looked up to see his friend staring at Sheppard's bed.  
"Rodney?" Carson said. The physicist's prolonged silence was making him nervous.

Rodney seemed to bodily deflate. "I didn't look after him, Carson. I didn't do crap except deflect a few of the rocks being thrown at him. We're alive because of Sheppard. Or, more appropriately, _I'm_ alive because of him. Hell, he didn't even know who I was, just that I was someone he was supposed to know, but it was enough for him to bust into some fortress during a battle and save my ass." Rodney worried his bottom lip for a moment before continuing, adding wistfully, "I didn't even know he was still alive."

There was quite the story behind the words. But Carson didn't pry, no matter what his curiosity begged.

He exchanged the stethoscope for the blood pressure cuff and slapped it onto Rodney's arm. He'd seen the marks on Rodney's back; Carson wouldn't be surprised if Rodney held back on saying anything. Rodney usually started spilling his guts before anyone had a chance to ask him what happened, talking his catharsis. His refusal to share was the same as John admitting to pain. When both happened, you knew things were bad.

Carson looked back at John, now nothing more than a lump beneath the blankets that rose and fell with his deep breathing. The scan hadn't revealed anything neurologically problematic. Carson suspected Rodney was close if not correct in his assumptions concerning John's amnesia.

The marks on Sheppard's back had been worse: deeper, crueler. Whatever the colonel's story, it wasn't going to be told any time soon.

"You're wrong, Rodney," Carson said, turning back, to inflate the cuff.

Rodney drummed his fingers impatiently on the edge of the bed. "About what?"

"About not doing crap. You brought John home, lad. Do ya honestly think he'd have been able to do that on his own?"

"Carson, the guy has amnesia. He didn't even know what home looked like."

Carson nodded. "Aye, exactly. You both played a part in surviving, Rodney. And ya did take care of the Colonel. Ya brought him home. So don't give me this tripe about not doing squat."

Rodney huffed out a breath but said nothing. There was officially nothing for him to say.

---------------------------

_They'd tenderized him first using ropes of linked metal since it made him scream sooner. One man circled him in a room too poorly lit to see his face. John was on his hands and knees half-naked in the cold. He trembled for a number of reasons, anger being one of them, fear the other._

"Where did you obtain your weapons? How do you create such weapons?"

"Who are you?"

"What world do you come from?"

"What are the symbols to your world?"

It was a new question every day, and a new meaning to Hell. They'd started with beatings and moved to less water and no food. Sometimes they liked to hang him up by his wrists. Mostly they wanted him on the ground to add kicks to the tenderizing.

The thin links of metal came down and tore another ribbon of flesh from John's back. He screamed, and a foot on his neck kept him from rolling onto his back. The chain was dangled in front of his face so he could see the blood dripping off it, soaking into the dry stone and dust.

Then the chain was tossed aside and the boot removed so he could be flipped to his back and held down. The branding iron bobbed closer to him, hell-red. It hovered over the soft spot between the ribs, hesitating for four heartbeats simply to prolong the inevitable. Then it plunged down, fire meeting vulnerable flesh.

John screamed.

He awoke sucking in air that wouldn't come, like breathing through a straw. He heard sounds over the ragged rasps of his breathing. His chest hurt, burned, and together with the incessant mechanical screaming and his inability to pull in air, he couldn't think. His hand scrabbled to his chest to claw and dig through mounds of material. His whole body felt lead-based, his brain misted over, his vision foggy and dark. They'd drugged him. That was what it was. They'd injected him with something that would either make him talk or too weak to fight back.

Or maybe it was killing him. Something was. His chest wasn't expanding the way it was supposed to, and his lung volume was shrinking. He arched his back and thumped at his chest trying to break through whatever it was squeezing the life out of him.

"Colonel Sheppard!"

Hands were all over him, pulling back the blankets and yanking up his shirt. They were going to brand him again. John struggled, arching and twisting out of too many grips.

"Colonel Sheppard, I need you to calm down! It's all right!"

John knew that voice. The mere fact it didn't belong in that place of pain broke through the torrent of terror like a battering ram. He felt something cool brush his nose and mouth. Something hard was pressed to his face, and pure oxygen flowed down his throat on the next pathetic inhale.  
"That's it, lad, deep breaths. Nice and easy, slow and deep."

The vise around his chest eased off, freeing his ribs. Pain knifed through his flanks, and he exhaled on a whimper.

" Not too deep. Cracked ribs and all..."

The haze parted as though a breeze had blown it away. John was able to see again, so he turned his gaze to the face he recognized the easiest out of all the ones hovering over him. Carson smiled down at him, looking both relieved and weary.

"You're doing good, John. Just keep breathing. You're all right."

The burning in his chest narrowed down to an itch pinpointed over the mark. John rubbed at it weakly.

"That buggin' you, lad?"

John breathed in, breathed out, and shuddered. "N-not anymore."

Carson clasped his shoulder. "You tell me if it does. Now, keep breathing. You'll be right as rain soon."

The mechanical shrieking was now a mechanical beep. Carson bustled about the bed, looking at machines before sticking the thermometer into John's ear. The look on Carson's face as he studied the readout wasn't helping John's frayed nerves.

"One-oh-three," Beckett muttered. "Rising. Damn it! Jenny, love, could you fetch me the cooling blanket? We need to bring it down..."

John knew he should have been disconcerted hearing that. He was, but not to the point of panic. He didn't have the energy left to even so much as wallow in fear. When Carson moved out of sight, John drifted back to sleep against his will.

When he next awoke, it was to being wrapped in a cocoon of absolute cold. He curled into a shivering ball and tried to call for help, but barely heard his own voice. Something was stuck in his ear, and he flinched with a hoarse yelp.

"Sorry, Colonel," a female voice replied. "I didn't mean to startle you, I just need to check your temperature."

"C-c-c-cold," John rasped between chattering teeth.

"I know. I'm sorry, Colonel, but we need to bring your temperature down. Which, by the looks of things, we have. I'll go inform Dr. Beckett, then we can have you warmed up in no time..."

Whatever else the nurse had to say became white noise to John. He heard voices, then felt the cold pull away and warmth wrap around him. John drifted off again.  
He awoke briefly to exhaustion but wasn't cold, so slipped back to sleep. He awoke again when Carson made him so he could stab his eyes with a pen-light, then listen to his heart and lungs. After that, he was allowed to sleep some more.

---------------------------------

The next time John awoke, he actually felt rested. He ached, a little in his head, some in his joints, but at a level that was easy to ignore. He rolled his head to the bed across from his, the one Rodney occupied.

It was empty.

John's heart thudded, and the beeping let who-ever happened to be close by know it. He tried to push himself up, but his arms wouldn't support his weight.

Rodney was gone.

"Colonel Sheppard?"

A hand on his shoulder caused him to jerk back. He looked up at the blonde nurse with her hand raised innocently and a chagrined smile.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to sneak up on you like that. Are you all right? Any pain?" She reached toward John, only to have him recoil from her. The nurse bit her bottom lip and pulled her hand back. "Colonel?"

"Where's Rodney?" he blurted. It was childish and a little harsh on the pride, he knew, to panic over the lack of the more familiar face. John was one high octave away from whining over Rodney breaking his promise that he would be there. To prevent that, John kept his mouth shut, waiting for an answer.

Crap, but he was pathetic. These people weren't exactly giving him a reason not to trust them. Caution heading toward paranoia had become like a security blanket for him on that alien world, and it was hard to let go. He caved to it since he didn't have the energy to convince himself to think otherwise.

"Dr. Beckett sent him with Teyla and Ronon to the Mess for food," the nurse replied, and her tone was edgy, nervous. "He thought it would be all right since you were asleep... and he felt Dr. McKay could do with the change of scenery. Would you like me to get Dr. Beckett?"

John nodded. He could do with familiarity, even if it wasn't Rodney. There was a sense of loneliness outside the well-known, which wasn't helping John's trust issues any. The nurse hurried off and seemed relieved to do so. It plucked John's guilt that he might have spooked the woman.

Beckett arrived not long after with the nurse following. The Scottish physician was all smiles on seeing John awake.

"Welcome back to the land of the conscious, Colonel. Hope you're up for a bit of soup. I'd send for something more to your liking, but you've been under for a good four days, so you're going to need something more gentle on your digestion." Beckett took the blood pressure cuff passed to him by the nurse and strapped it around John's upper arm.

"Rodney's all right?" John asked.

"Aye, he's fine and obnoxious as ever. You'd think he'd made my infirmary his permanent residence. He refuses to stay in his own quarters until he's certain you're not going to die on him anytime soon." Carson frowned slightly. "He's suffering a few abandonment issues."

John gave Carson an apologetic look. "He thought I'd died on that world."

"Aye, I know. It's not you're fault, Colonel. Ga! You and that bloody guilt complex of yours."

John shrugged. "Sorry."

Carson's grin returned, and he patted John on the arm below the inflated cuff. "I'm joking, lad. Stones in glass houses and all that. I believe excessive guilt trips are the norm for all us expedition members. Rodney, too, though he'd never admit to it." Carson removed the cuff and tossed it onto the rolling tray beside the bed "Any further recollections?"

John massaged the back of his neck wearily and looked away. Images skittered across his mind like shadows, and it would have been so easy to dismiss them as bad dreams. The scar on his chest wouldn't let him. So he did recall, just not what he wanted, and it made him shudder. So much for avoidance.

"Some things," he quietly stated. He waited for Carson to pry, while praying that he dropped the subject.

"You don't sound thrilled," Carson said.

John shrugged, keeping his hand on his neck.

"Is it bad?"

John shook his head. "Still kind of vague but... I get the idea, if you know what I mean." He looked up at Carson, resigned to the inevitable as best he could, but feeling a little helpless. "It's just going to get clearer."

Carson nodded solemnly. He was all sympathy without the pity, as though he completely understood what John was talking about. John had the feeling he did, if not because of shared experience then because the man knew what it was to never be allowed to forget. The longer John stared at Beckett, the more images flitted by of things done that led to regrets, fear, and pain.

Beckett on a world of Wraith-turned-humans-turned-Wraith. He'd been interrogated, and wraith didn't hold back when it came to interrogations.

"That it will," Carson said. "My advice is to talk about it at some point. It really does help. Only when you're ready, though. I'll not have you pushed into recovery, since it'll only set you back. On that note, I'd like to keep you in the infirmary for a bit even after you make a full physical recovery. Considering what happened to you the moment you arrived home, I don't want to take any chances. You'll be free to come and go as soon as you have the strength to do so. I'd just feel better having you where I can keep an eye on you should memory resurgence have any adverse effects."

John nodded. "Sounds like a good idea."

Carson's eyes went round. "Ga, never thought I'd live to see the day when Colonel Sheppard's agreeable about being confined to the infirmary. Should have had a camera handy."

John grinned at that. "I'm not exactly Colonel Sheppard at the moment." He tapped the side of his skull. "He hasn't woken up yet."

Carson clasped John's shoulder. "He will, lad. Just give it time and he will." He put his stethoscope on and started the vitals check. Rodney returned, carrying a tray with a small ceramic bowl of soup and an even smaller carton of orange juice.

"Don't even think about getting used to this," he said to John, handing the tray off to Carson. "I will endure boredom to keep you company out of the kindness of my heart, but I'm not your damn errand boy. I've come painfully to the determination that servitude isn't my forte. So, how is he?"

"Better," Carson announced, beaming like a proud parent. "Fever's down, congestion's gone. A little more rest and a lot of food – he should be back on his feet in no time."

----------------------------

"No time" turned into three days before John was able to eat solid food and had strength enough to get out of bed. Carson wasn't a man who pushed for healing. He liked his patients to take it slow, and so restricted John's movements to the infirmary. A few days later, he was allowed a few short walks through Atlantis.  
The crawl toward one hundred percent was equally for the sake of body and mind. John explored the city one piece at a time, day by day, in the company of McKay. First the Mess Hall, so John didn't have to take his meals in the infirmary. They went when it wasn't so crowded to avoid assaulting John with a multitude of faces. Teyla and Ronon brought John to the gym to start him on exercises that would build his strength without taxing him. Next was the Jumper Bay and a ride in a Jumper.

Rodney did the piloting, for about ten minutes. The euphoria of flight had never left John's memory. During lulls in the darker dreams came dreams of endless stretches of sky over a myriad of lands, and the freedom of that sky. Recalling how to fly the Jumpers came to John so fast it left him both momentarily dizzy and giddy, and he begged Rodney out of the pilot's chair and took over.

Taking the controls sent more memories flooding through him. Giddiness mellowed into contentment that would have left him weaving through the towers of Atlantis for the rest of the day.

Remembrance continued to flow without pouring, allowing his mind to absorb. Names came before he saw faces, and the memory became complete with the faces. Zelenka, Miko, Lorne, Stackhouse, marines and scientists one by one or sometimes in clusters. Elizabeth brought him to the control room, the gateroom, and the meeting room. Memories flowed faster, and John had to leave when he swayed from them.

Atlantis was like the Indaani caves, full of chambers, rooms, places to climb, upper levels and lower levels. The likeness made John comfortable with the place long before memories returned. He knew his way around without having to memorize all over again.

John's own quarters were last on the tour, and it was a tour Rodney let him take on his own... sort of. As John basked among his things, Rodney hovered in the doorway, just in case the river became a flood John couldn't handle.

It was the room of a stranger when John first walked in. He stood there at first, looking around at individual items. He stared at the item long enough for it to soak into his mind and invoke bits and pieces of recollection. Everything down to a discarded sock under his bed got its chance to get him to remember. He'd been looking for that sock for a while. He thought it had been lost by the laundry crew.

John went over to his guitar in its stand and ran his fingers lightly over the strings. He looked at his Johnny Cash poster and songs popped into his head. He went to his nightstand, picked up the framed photo, and smiled. An inexplicable feeling of contentment enveloped him, as though his skin were finally adjusting to fit more appropriately around his bones.

John moved around his bed, picking up his guitar along the way, and sat on the edge. He thrummed across the strings and the guitar vibrated with a soft resonance, but he couldn't remember the notes to the songs in his head to play.

_In time._

The bits and pieces could wait. All that mattered was he was back where he belonged.

He was home.

------------------------------

John twanged the string, only to get the wrong sound. He twisted the knob little-by-little until the right sound was finally produced, and tried again.

The balcony doors whispered open. John looked up from his strumming to see Rodney step out and sit with legs folded Indian style on the other side of the small ledge. He eased back until he was resting up against a pillar, staring out over the water to the horizon cutting the fading sun in half. The sky was soft in warm sunset colors fading to dark starry violet. There was an orange path cast over the water, like a choppy carpet leading to the sun.

John plucked at the strings.

"So, what are you trying to play?" Rodney asked in a rather indifferent timbre as though he'd been forced to speak. The physicist held up a single finger. "Wait, don't tell me. Johnny Cash?"

"Give the man a prize," John said.

"Which one?"

"Which ever one I happen to remember how to play."

Rodney nodded sagely. "Sooo... I guess it's okay for me to say that you're memory isn't all that up to par yet?"

John ran his thumbnail down all the strings. "Actually, it is. It's just been a while since I've played."

John plucked out a simple version of "Walk the Line" for the purpose of refreshing his mind. He lifted his hand away, letting the last string vibrate for a heartbeat before he pressed his hand to the strings, silencing them. He looked up to give Rodney a tight, caustic smile.

"Guess what I've been remembering?"

Rodney looked over at John. His expression was sympathetic while trying not to look sympathetic, and failing miserably. He was also looking a little uneasy. "Um... details or just, you know, in general?"

John stared out at the sinking sun. Atlantis really did have beautiful sunsets. "I would say in general. Little bits of what happened to me, but mostly how they branded me." He pulled up his shirt one-handed for a quick look at the small bandage covering the spot where the mark had been. Everyone had felt it necessary for the mark to be removed through chemicals and even a laser, the kind used to remove tattoos. The mark could be recognized on other worlds, and John didn't need that threat plaguing every future mission. John adjusted his shirt back into place.

"Sorry to hear that," Rodney said.

John shrugged, apathetic. "There's speculation I'll probably never remember beyond being branded. Well, I've been speculating. I don't recall much after, probably what with me being out of it from pain and unconsciousness and all that. Truthfully, I wouldn't want it any other way."

"You think?" Rodney said. "I wouldn't mind a little amnesia of the whole ordeal, myself. The dreams are a pain in the ass, and talking to Heightmeyer isn't as cathartic as it used to be. Has Beckett booted your skinny rear in her direction yet?"

"He's suggested, it but isn't going to push for it. It's not like the nightmares have me backing into a corner gibbering. I don't even wake up screaming anymore."  
Rodney squinted thoughtfully. "For real?" Then he rolled his eyes. "Oh, yes, leave it to the man with the questionable sanity to come out perfectly sane from being tortured."

"It's not a matter of sanity or insanity, Rodney, it's a matter of perspective. And if you must know – not that I want this all over Atlantis – I have talked to Heightmeyer. Not on a regular bases, just enough to help with the memory thing."

"I thought you said your memory was fine?"

"It is - at least, now it is. I'd been having some problems a few days ago with my memory going schizophrenic on me. One moment I'd be walking the halls, the next I'd forget where I was, or I'd forget who someone was. One day I woke up and it took me two minutes to remember my name. Kate's been helping me with it."

Rodney patted the air with his hand. "Wait, hold up, go back to the perspective thing. What did you mean by it's a matter of perspective? What is?"

John pursed his lips and rolled his eyes upward thoughtfully. "Life in general." He looked back down at his guitar. "There's two ways I can deal with what happened to me... us. Two ways _both_ of us can deal with it. We either let it fester and gnaw until we're doing the gibbering thing, or live in the now and let the past be a lesson and not a deciding factor to how we live in the future. It... it wasn't all bad, Rodney. My time spent with the Indaani was awesome. Uncomfortable, since I knew they weren't my people, but still awesome."

Rodney sighed. "Sorry I can't say the same for myself, Colonel."

John winced. He'd never been good at pep talks and words of wisdom. His motivational speeches normally consisted of one-liners such as "buck-up" or "you can do it, Rodney, so shut up and do it." The heartfelt stuff made his gut clench and his mind wander. He tried, though. He forced the words when he had to, which normally only made things worse. Still, he tried, because sometimes he got across what he was trying to. He just had to keep trying until those words were found.  
"Yeah, I know. And I don't expect you to. It's not going to remain a nightmare forever, Rodney. Not unless you let it. It's not like I've gotten over anything. I have, however, moved on. Sort of. Like you said, the dreams are a pain in the ass, but at least they're just dreams. They'll go away eventually, especially now that we're home. It's just going to be a while."

John resumed plucking, trying for a little more of "Walk the Line."

"Thank you for saving me, by the way," Rodney said. "And for remembering me enough to pull my ass out of purgatory. Oh, and for not dying, after all."  
John grinned. "You're welcome." He picked up the tempo, going from plucking to playing with more feeling. "Thanks for saving me."

"I didn't..."

John looked up, caught Rodney's gaze, and held it. Rodney stared, gaping for a moment, ready to protest, until John narrowed his eyes. Rodney slumped in defeat, only to straighten up again. "You're welcome." He returned his gaze to the last inch of sun slipping beneath the horizon. The conversation had effectively ended before discomfort levels could reach gut-twisting proportions. Besides, they'd said all they needed to say.

John smiled, shaking his head. Then, recalling the rest of the song, he played on.

The End

A/N: Hugs to everyone who read and reviewed. It makes me endlessly happy to know that this was enjoyed :D


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